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Sophist
by Plato
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SOPHIST
by
Plato
Translated by Benjamin Jowett
INTRODUCTION AND ANALYSIS.
The dramatic power of the dialogues of Plato appears to diminish as the
metaphysical interest of them increases (compare Introd. to the Philebus).
There are no descriptions of time, place or persons, in the Sophist and
Statesman, but we are plunged at once into philosophical discussions; the
poetical charm has disappeared, and those who have no taste for abstruse
metaphysics will greatly prefer the earlier dialogues to the later ones.
Plato is conscious of the change, and in the Statesman expressly accuses
himself of a tediousness in the two dialogues, which he ascribes to his
desire of developing the dialectical method. On the other hand, the
kindred spirit of Hegel seemed to find in the Sophist the crown and summit
of the Platonic philosophy--here is the place at which Plato most nearly
approaches to the Hegelian identity of Being and Not-being. Nor will the
great importance of the two dialogues be doubted by any one who forms a
conception of the state of mind and opinion which they are intended to
meet. The sophisms of the day were undermining philosophy; the denial of
the existence of Not-being, and of the connexion of ideas, was making truth
and falsehood equally impossible. It has been said that Plato would have
written differently, if he had been acquainted with the Organon of
Aristotle. But could the Organon of Aristotle ever have been written
unless the Sophist and Statesman had preceded? The swarm of fallacies
which arose in the infancy of mental science, and which was born and bred
in the decay of the pre-Socratic philosophies, was not dispelled by
Aristotle, but by Socrates and Plato. The summa genera of thought, the
nature of the proposition, of definition, of generalization, of synthesis
and analysis, of division and cross-division, are clearly described, and
the processes of induction and deduction are constantly employed in the
dialogues of Plato. The 'slippery' nature of comparison, the danger of
putting words in the place of things, the fallacy of arguing 'a dicto
secundum,' and in a circle, are frequently indicated by him. To all these
processes of truth and error, Aristotle, in the next generation, gave
distinctness; he brought them together in a separate science. But he is
not to be regarded as the original inventor of any of the great logical
forms, with the exception of the syllogism.
There is little worthy of remark in the characters of the Sophist. The
most noticeable point is the final retirement of Socrates from the field of
argument, and the substitution for him of an Eleatic stranger, who is
described as a pupil of Parmenides and Zeno, and is supposed to have
descended from a higher world in order to convict the Socratic circle of
error. As in the Timaeus, Plato seems to intimate by the withdrawal of
Socrates that he is passing beyond the limits of his teaching; and in the
Sophist and Statesman, as well as in the Parmenides, he probably means to
imply that he is making a closer approach to the schools of Elea and
Megara. He had much in common with them, but he must first submit their
ideas to criticism and revision. He had once thought as he says, speaking
by the mouth of the Eleatic, that he understood their doctrine of Not-
being; but now he does not even comprehend the nature of Being. The
friends of ideas (Soph.) are alluded to by him as distant acquaintances,
whom he criticizes ab extra; we do not recognize at first sight that he is
criticizing himself. The character of the Eleatic stranger is colourless;
he is to a certain extent the reflection of his father and master,
Parmenides, who is the protagonist in the dialogue which is called by his
name. Theaetetus himself is not distinguished by the remarkable traits
which are attributed to him in the preceding dialogue. He is no longer
under the spell of Socrates, or subject to the operation of his midwifery,
though the fiction of question and answer is still maintained, and the
necessity of taking Theaetetus along with him is several times insisted
upon by his partner in the discussion. There is a reminiscence of the old
Theaetetus in his remark that he will not tire of the argument, and in his
conviction, which the Eleatic thinks likely to be permanent, that the
course of events is governed by the will of God. Throughout the two
dialogues Socrates continues a silent auditor, in the Statesman just
reminding us of his presence, at the commencement, by a characteristic jest
about the statesman and the philosopher, and by an allusion to his
namesake, with whom on that ground he claims relationship, as he had
already claimed an affinity with Theaetetus, grounded on the likeness of
his ugly face. But in neither dialogue, any more than in the Timaeus, does
he offer any criticism on the views which are propounded by another.
The style, though wanting in dramatic power,--in this respect resembling
the Philebus and the Laws,--is very clear and accurate, and has several
touches of humour and satire. The language is less fanciful and
imaginative than that of the earlier dialogues; and there is more of
bitterness, as in the Laws, though traces of a similar temper may also be
observed in the description of the 'great brute' in the Republic, and in
the contrast of the lawyer and philosopher in the Theaetetus. The
following are characteristic passages: 'The ancient philosophers, of whom
we may say, without offence, that they went on their way rather regardless
of whether we understood them or not;' the picture of the materialists, or
earth-born giants, 'who grasped oaks and rocks in their hands,' and who
must be improved before they can be reasoned with; and the equally
humourous delineation of the friends of ideas, who defend themselves from a
fastness in the invisible world; or the comparison of the Sophist to a
painter or maker (compare Republic), and the hunt after him in the rich
meadow-lands of youth and wealth; or, again, the light and graceful touch
with which the older philosophies are painted ('Ionian and Sicilian
muses'), the comparison of them to mythological tales, and the fear of the
Eleatic that he will be counted a parricide if he ventures to lay hands on
his father Parmenides; or, once more, the likening of the Eleatic stranger
to a god from heaven.--All these passages, notwithstanding the decline of
the style, retain the impress of the great master of language. But the
equably diffused grace is gone; instead of the endless variety of the early
dialogues, traces of the rhythmical monotonous cadence of the Laws begin to
appear; and already an approach is made to the technical language of
Aristotle, in the frequent use of the words 'essence,' 'power,'
'generation,' 'motion,' 'rest,' 'action,' 'passion,' and the like.
The Sophist, like the Phaedrus, has a double character, and unites two
enquirers, which are only in a somewhat forced manner connected with each
other. The first is the search after the Sophist, the second is the
enquiry into the nature of Not-being, which occupies the middle part of the
work. For 'Not-being' is the hole or division of the dialectical net in
which the Sophist has hidden himself. He is the imaginary impersonation of
false opinion. Yet he denies the possibility of false opinion; for
falsehood is that which is not, and therefore has no existence. At length
the difficulty is solved; the answer, in the language of the Republic,
appears 'tumbling out at our feet.' Acknowledging that there is a
communion of kinds with kinds, and not merely one Being or Good having
different names, or several isolated ideas or classes incapable of
communion, we discover 'Not-being' to be the other of 'Being.'
Transferring this to language and thought, we have no difficulty in
apprehending that a proposition may be false as well as true. The Sophist,
drawn out of the shelter which Cynic and Megarian paradoxes have
temporarily afforded him, is proved to be a dissembler and juggler with
words.
The chief points of interest in the dialogue are: (I) the character
attributed to the Sophist: (II) the dialectical method: (III) the nature
of the puzzle about 'Not-being:' (IV) the battle of the philosophers: (V)
the relation of the Sophist to other dialogues.
I. The Sophist in Plato is the master of the art of illusion; the
charlatan, the foreigner, the prince of esprits-faux, the hireling who is
not a teacher, and who, from whatever point of view he is regarded, is the
opposite of the true teacher. He is the 'evil one,' the ideal
representative of all that Plato most disliked in the moral and
intellectual tendencies of his own age; the adversary of the almost equally
ideal Socrates. He seems to be always growing in the fancy of Plato, now
boastful, now eristic, now clothing himself in rags of philosophy, now more
akin to the rhetorician or lawyer, now haranguing, now questioning, until
the final appearance in the Politicus of his departing shadow in the
disguise of a statesman. We are not to suppose that Plato intended by such
a description to depict Protagoras or Gorgias, or even Thrasymachus, who
all turn out to be 'very good sort of people when we know them,' and all of
them part on good terms with Socrates. But he is speaking of a being as
imaginary as the wise man of the Stoics, and whose character varies in
different dialogues. Like mythology, Greek philosophy has a tendency to
personify ideas. And the Sophist is not merely a teacher of rhetoric for a
fee of one or fifty drachmae (Crat.), but an ideal of Plato's in which the
falsehood of all mankind is reflected.
A milder tone is adopted towards the Sophists in a well-known passage of
the Republic, where they are described as the followers rather than the
leaders of the rest of mankind. Plato ridicules the notion that any
individuals can corrupt youth to a degree worth speaking of in comparison
with the greater influence of public opinion. But there is no real
inconsistency between this and other descriptions of the Sophist which
occur in the Platonic writings. For Plato is not justifying the Sophists
in the passage just quoted, but only representing their power to be
contemptible; they are to be despised rather than feared, and are no worse
than the rest of mankind. But a teacher or statesman may be justly
condemned, who is on a level with mankind when he ought to be above them.
There is another point of view in which this passage should also be
considered. The great enemy of Plato is the world, not exactly in the
theological sense, yet in one not wholly different--the world as the hater
of truth and lover of appearance, occupied in the pursuit of gain and
pleasure rather than of knowledge, banded together against the few good and
wise men, and devoid of true education. This creature has many heads:
rhetoricians, lawyers, statesmen, poets, sophists. But the Sophist is the
Proteus who takes the likeness of all of them; all other deceivers have a
piece of him in them. And sometimes he is represented as the corrupter of
the world; and sometimes the world as the corrupter of him and of itself.
Of late years the Sophists have found an enthusiastic defender in the
distinguished historian of Greece. He appears to maintain (1) that the
term 'Sophist' is not the name of a particular class, and would have been
applied indifferently to Socrates and Plato, as well as to Gorgias and
Protagoras; (2) that the bad sense was imprinted on the word by the genius
of Plato; (3) that the principal Sophists were not the corrupters of youth
(for the Athenian youth were no more corrupted in the age of Demosthenes
than in the age of Pericles), but honourable and estimable persons, who
supplied a training in literature which was generally wanted at the time.
We will briefly consider how far these statements appear to be justified by
facts: and, 1, about the meaning of the word there arises an interesting
question:--
Many words are used both in a general and a specific sense, and the two
senses are not always clearly distinguished. Sometimes the generic meaning
has been narrowed to the specific, while in other cases the specific
meaning has been enlarged or altered. Examples of the former class are
furnished by some ecclesiastical terms: apostles, prophets, bishops,
elders, catholics. Examples of the latter class may also be found in a
similar field: jesuits, puritans, methodists, and the like. Sometimes the
meaning is both narrowed and enlarged; and a good or bad sense will subsist
side by side with a neutral one. A curious effect is produced on the
meaning of a word when the very term which is stigmatized by the world
(e.g. Methodists) is adopted by the obnoxious or derided class; this tends
to define the meaning. Or, again, the opposite result is produced, when
the world refuses to allow some sect or body of men the possession of an
honourable name which they have assumed, or applies it to them only in
mockery or irony.
The term 'Sophist' is one of those words of which the meaning has been both
contracted and enlarged. Passages may be quoted from Herodotus and the
tragedians, in which the word is used in a neutral sense for a contriver or
deviser or inventor, without including any ethical idea of goodness or
badness. Poets as well as philosophers were called Sophists in the fifth
century before Christ. In Plato himself the term is applied in the sense
of a 'master in art,' without any bad meaning attaching to it (Symp.;
Meno). In the later Greek, again, 'sophist' and 'philosopher' became
almost indistinguishable. There was no reproach conveyed by the word; the
additional association, if any, was only that of rhetorician or teacher.
Philosophy had become eclecticism and imitation: in the decline of Greek
thought there was no original voice lifted up 'which reached to a thousand
years because of the god.' Hence the two words, like the characters
represented by them, tended to pass into one another. Yet even here some
differences appeared; for the term 'Sophist' would hardly have been applied
to the greater names, such as Plotinus, and would have been more often used
of a professor of philosophy in general than of a maintainer of particular
tenets.
But the real question is, not whether the word 'Sophist' has all these
senses, but whether there is not also a specific bad sense in which the
term is applied to certain contemporaries of Socrates. Would an Athenian,
as Mr. Grote supposes, in the fifth century before Christ, have included
Socrates and Plato, as well as Gorgias and Protagoras, under the specific
class of Sophists? To this question we must answer, No: if ever the term
is applied to Socrates and Plato, either the application is made by an
enemy out of mere spite, or the sense in which it is used is neutral.
Plato, Xenophon, Isocrates, Aristotle, all give a bad import to the word;
and the Sophists are regarded as a separate class in all of them. And in
later Greek literature, the distinction is quite marked between the
succession of philosophers from Thales to Aristotle, and the Sophists of
the age of Socrates, who appeared like meteors for a short time in
different parts of Greece. For the purposes of comedy, Socrates may have
been identified with the Sophists, and he seems to complain of this in the
Apology. But there is no reason to suppose that Socrates, differing by so
many outward marks, would really have been confounded in the mind of
Anytus, or Callicles, or of any intelligent Athenian, with the splendid
foreigners who from time to time visited Athens, or appeared at the Olympic
games. The man of genius, the great original thinker, the disinterested
seeker after truth, the master of repartee whom no one ever defeated in an
argument, was separated, even in the mind of the vulgar Athenian, by an
'interval which no geometry can express,' from the balancer of sentences,
the interpreter and reciter of the poets, the divider of the meanings of
words, the teacher of rhetoric, the professor of morals and manners.
2. The use of the term 'Sophist' in the dialogues of Plato also shows that
the bad sense was not affixed by his genius, but already current. When
Protagoras says, 'I confess that I am a Sophist,' he implies that the art
which he professes has already a bad name; and the words of the young
Hippocrates, when with a blush upon his face which is just seen by the
light of dawn he admits that he is going to be made 'a Sophist,' would lose
their point, unless the term had been discredited. There is nothing
surprising in the Sophists having an evil name; that, whether deserved or
not, was a natural consequence of their vocation. That they were
foreigners, that they made fortunes, that they taught novelties, that they
excited the minds of youth, are quite sufficient reasons to account for the
opprobrium which attached to them. The genius of Plato could not have
stamped the word anew, or have imparted the associations which occur in
contemporary writers, such as Xenophon and Isocrates. Changes in the
meaning of words can only be made with great difficulty, and not unless
they are supported by a strong current of popular feeling. There is
nothing improbable in supposing that Plato may have extended and envenomed
the meaning, or that he may have done the Sophists the same kind of
disservice with posterity which Pascal did to the Jesuits. But the bad
sense of the word was not and could not have been invented by him, and is
found in his earlier dialogues, e.g. the Protagoras, as well as in the
later.
3. There is no ground for disbelieving that the principal Sophists,
Gorgias, Protagoras, Prodicus, Hippias, were good and honourable men. The
notion that they were corrupters of the Athenian youth has no real
foundation, and partly arises out of the use of the term 'Sophist' in
modern times. The truth is, that we know little about them; and the
witness of Plato in their favour is probably not much more historical than
his witness against them. Of that national decline of genius, unity,
political force, which has been sometimes described as the corruption of
youth, the Sophists were one among many signs;--in these respects Athens
may have degenerated; but, as Mr. Grote remarks, there is no reason to
suspect any greater moral corruption in the age of Demosthenes than in the
age of Pericles. The Athenian youth were not corrupted in this sense, and
therefore the Sophists could not have corrupted them. It is remarkable,
and may be fairly set down to their credit, that Plato nowhere attributes
to them that peculiar Greek sympathy with youth, which he ascribes to
Parmenides, and which was evidently common in the Socratic circle. Plato
delights to exhibit them in a ludicrous point of view, and to show them
always rather at a disadvantage in the company of Socrates. But he has no
quarrel with their characters, and does not deny that they are respectable
men.
The Sophist, in the dialogue which is called after him, is exhibited in
many different lights, and appears and reappears in a variety of forms.
There is some want of the higher Platonic art in the Eleatic Stranger
eliciting his true character by a labourious process of enquiry, when he
had already admitted that he knew quite well the difference between the
Sophist and the Philosopher, and had often heard the question discussed;--
such an anticipation would hardly have occurred in the earlier dialogues.
But Plato could not altogether give up his Socratic method, of which
another trace may be thought to be discerned in his adoption of a common
instance before he proceeds to the greater matter in hand. Yet the example
is also chosen in order to damage the 'hooker of men' as much as possible;
each step in the pedigree of the angler suggests some injurious reflection
about the Sophist. They are both hunters after a living prey, nearly
related to tyrants and thieves, and the Sophist is the cousin of the
parasite and flatterer. The effect of this is heightened by the accidental
manner in which the discovery is made, as the result of a scientific
division. His descent in another branch affords the opportunity of more
'unsavoury comparisons.' For he is a retail trader, and his wares are
either imported or home-made, like those of other retail traders; his art
is thus deprived of the character of a liberal profession. But the most
distinguishing characteristic of him is, that he is a disputant, and
higgles over an argument. A feature of the Eristic here seems to blend
with Plato's usual description of the Sophists, who in the early dialogues,
and in the Republic, are frequently depicted as endeavouring to save
themselves from disputing with Socrates by making long orations. In this
character he parts company from the vain and impertinent talker in private
life, who is a loser of money, while he is a maker of it.
But there is another general division under which his art may be also
supposed to fall, and that is purification; and from purification is
descended education, and the new principle of education is to interrogate
men after the manner of Socrates, and make them teach themselves. Here
again we catch a glimpse rather of a Socratic or Eristic than of a Sophist
in the ordinary sense of the term. And Plato does not on this ground
reject the claim of the Sophist to be the true philosopher. One more
feature of the Eristic rather than of the Sophist is the tendency of the
troublesome animal to run away into the darkness of Not-being. Upon the
whole, we detect in him a sort of hybrid or double nature, of which, except
perhaps in the Euthydemus of Plato, we find no other trace in Greek
philosophy; he combines the teacher of virtue with the Eristic; while in
his omniscience, in his ignorance of himself, in his arts of deception, and
in his lawyer-like habit of writing and speaking about all things, he is
still the antithesis of Socrates and of the true teacher.
II. The question has been asked, whether the method of 'abscissio
infinti,' by which the Sophist is taken, is a real and valuable logical
process. Modern science feels that this, like other processes of formal
logic, presents a very inadequate conception of the actual complex
procedure of the mind by which scientific truth is detected and verified.
Plato himself seems to be aware that mere division is an unsafe and
uncertain weapon, first, in the Statesman, when he says that we should
divide in the middle, for in that way we are more likely to attain species;
secondly, in the parallel precept of the Philebus, that we should not pass
from the most general notions to infinity, but include all the intervening
middle principles, until, as he also says in the Statesman, we arrive at
the infima species; thirdly, in the Phaedrus, when he says that the
dialectician will carve the limbs of truth without mangling them; and once
more in the Statesman, if we cannot bisect species, we must carve them as
well as we can. No better image of nature or truth, as an organic whole,
can be conceived than this. So far is Plato from supposing that mere
division and subdivision of general notions will guide men into all truth.
Plato does not really mean to say that the Sophist or the Statesman can be
caught in this way. But these divisions and subdivisions were favourite
logical exercises of the age in which he lived; and while indulging his
dialectical fancy, and making a contribution to logical method, he delights
also to transfix the Eristic Sophist with weapons borrowed from his own
armoury. As we have already seen, the division gives him the opportunity
of making the most damaging reflections on the Sophist and all his kith and
kin, and to exhibit him in the most discreditable light.
Nor need we seriously consider whether Plato was right in assuming that an
animal so various could not be confined within the limits of a single
definition. In the infancy of logic, men sought only to obtain a
definition of an unknown or uncertain term; the after reflection scarcely
occurred to them that the word might have several senses, which shaded off
into one another, and were not capable of being comprehended in a single
notion. There is no trace of this reflection in Plato. But neither is
there any reason to think, even if the reflection had occurred to him, that
he would have been deterred from carrying on the war with weapons fair or
unfair against the outlaw Sophist.
III. The puzzle about 'Not-being' appears to us to be one of the most
unreal difficulties of ancient philosophy. We cannot understand the
attitude of mind which could imagine that falsehood had no existence, if
reality was denied to Not-being: How could such a question arise at all,
much less become of serious importance? The answer to this, and to nearly
all other difficulties of early Greek philosophy, is to be sought for in
the history of ideas, and the answer is only unsatisfactory because our
knowledge is defective. In the passage from the world of sense and
imagination and common language to that of opinion and reflection the human
mind was exposed to many dangers, and often
'Found no end in wandering mazes lost.'
On the other hand, the discovery of abstractions was the great source of
all mental improvement in after ages. It was the pushing aside of the old,
the revelation of the new. But each one of the company of abstractions, if
we may speak in the metaphorical language of Plato, became in turn the
tyrant of the mind, the dominant idea, which would allow no other to have a
share in the throne. This is especially true of the Eleatic philosophy:
while the absoluteness of Being was asserted in every form of language, the
sensible world and all the phenomena of experience were comprehended under
Not-being. Nor was any difficulty or perplexity thus created, so long as
the mind, lost in the contemplation of Being, asked no more questions, and
never thought of applying the categories of Being or Not-being to mind or
opinion or practical life.
But the negative as well as the positive idea had sunk deep into the
intellect of man. The effect of the paradoxes of Zeno extended far beyond
the Eleatic circle. And now an unforeseen consequence began to arise. If
the Many were not, if all things were names of the One, and nothing could
be predicated of any other thing, how could truth be distinguished from
falsehood? The Eleatic philosopher would have replied that Being is alone
true. But mankind had got beyond his barren abstractions: they were
beginning to analyze, to classify, to define, to ask what is the nature of
knowledge, opinion, sensation. Still less could they be content with the
description which Achilles gives in Homer of the man whom his soul hates--
os chi eteron men keuthe eni phresin, allo de eipe.
For their difficulty was not a practical but a metaphysical one; and their
conception of falsehood was really impaired and weakened by a metaphysical
illusion.
The strength of the illusion seems to lie in the alternative: If we once
admit the existence of Being and Not-being, as two spheres which exclude
each other, no Being or reality can be ascribed to Not-being, and therefore
not to falsehood, which is the image or expression of Not-being. Falsehood
is wholly false; and to speak of true falsehood, as Theaetetus does
(Theaet.), is a contradiction in terms. The fallacy to us is ridiculous
and transparent,--no better than those which Plato satirizes in the
Euthydemus. It is a confusion of falsehood and negation, from which Plato
himself is not entirely free. Instead of saying, 'This is not in
accordance with facts,' 'This is proved by experience to be false,' and
from such examples forming a general notion of falsehood, the mind of the
Greek thinker was lost in the mazes of the Eleatic philosophy. And the
greater importance which Plato attributes to this fallacy, compared with
others, is due to the influence which the Eleatic philosophy exerted over
him. He sees clearly to a certain extent; but he has not yet attained a
complete mastery over the ideas of his predecessors--they are still ends to
him, and not mere instruments of thought. They are too rough-hewn to be
harmonized in a single structure, and may be compared to rocks which
project or overhang in some ancient city's walls. There are many such
imperfect syncretisms or eclecticisms in the history of philosophy. A
modern philosopher, though emancipated from scholastic notions of essence
or substance, might still be seriously affected by the abstract idea of
necessity; or though accustomed, like Bacon, to criticize abstract notions,
might not extend his criticism to the syllogism.
The saying or thinking the thing that is not, would be the popular
definition of falsehood or error. If we were met by the Sophist's
objection, the reply would probably be an appeal to experience. Ten
thousands, as Homer would say (mala murioi), tell falsehoods and fall into
errors. And this is Plato's reply, both in the Cratylus and Sophist.
'Theaetetus is flying,' is a sentence in form quite as grammatical as
'Theaetetus is sitting'; the difference between the two sentences is, that
the one is true and the other false. But, before making this appeal to
common sense, Plato propounds for our consideration a theory of the nature
of the negative.
The theory is, that Not-being is relation. Not-being is the other of
Being, and has as many kinds as there are differences in Being. This
doctrine is the simple converse of the famous proposition of Spinoza,--not
'Omnis determinatio est negatio,' but 'Omnis negatio est determinatio';--
not, All distinction is negation, but, All negation is distinction. Not-
being is the unfolding or determining of Being, and is a necessary element
in all other things that are. We should be careful to observe, first, that
Plato does not identify Being with Not-being; he has no idea of progression
by antagonism, or of the Hegelian vibration of moments: he would not have
said with Heracleitus, 'All things are and are not, and become and become
not.' Secondly, he has lost sight altogether of the other sense of Not-
being, as the negative of Being; although he again and again recognizes the
validity of the law of contradiction. Thirdly, he seems to confuse
falsehood with negation. Nor is he quite consistent in regarding Not-being
as one class of Being, and yet as coextensive with Being in general.
Before analyzing further the topics thus suggested, we will endeavour to
trace the manner in which Plato arrived at his conception of Not-being.
In all the later dialogues of Plato, the idea of mind or intelligence
becomes more and more prominent. That idea which Anaxagoras employed
inconsistently in the construction of the world, Plato, in the Philebus,
the Sophist, and the Laws, extends to all things, attributing to Providence
a care, infinitesimal as well as infinite, of all creation. The divine
mind is the leading religious thought of the later works of Plato. The
human mind is a sort of reflection of this, having ideas of Being,
Sameness, and the like. At times they seem to be parted by a great gulf
(Parmenides); at other times they have a common nature, and the light of a
common intelligence.
But this ever-growing idea of mind is really irreconcilable with the
abstract Pantheism of the Eleatics. To the passionate language of
Parmenides, Plato replies in a strain equally passionate:--What! has not
Being mind? and is not Being capable of being known? and, if this is
admitted, then capable of being affected or acted upon?--in motion, then,
and yet not wholly incapable of rest. Already we have been compelled to
attribute opposite determinations to Being. And the answer to the
difficulty about Being may be equally the answer to the difficulty about
Not-being.
The answer is, that in these and all other determinations of any notion we
are attributing to it 'Not-being.' We went in search of Not-being and
seemed to lose Being, and now in the hunt after Being we recover both.
Not-being is a kind of Being, and in a sense co-extensive with Being. And
there are as many divisions of Not-being as of Being. To every positive
idea--'just,' 'beautiful,' and the like, there is a corresponding negative
idea--'not-just,' 'not-beautiful,' and the like.
A doubt may be raised whether this account of the negative is really the
true one. The common logicians would say that the 'not-just,' 'not-
beautiful,' are not really classes at all, but are merged in one great
class of the infinite or negative. The conception of Plato, in the days
before logic, seems to be more correct than this. For the word 'not' does
not altogether annihilate the positive meaning of the word 'just': at
least, it does not prevent our looking for the 'not-just' in or about the
same class in which we might expect to find the 'just.' 'Not-just is not-
honourable' is neither a false nor an unmeaning proposition. The reason is
that the negative proposition has really passed into an undefined positive.
To say that 'not-just' has no more meaning than 'not-honourable'--that is
to say, that the two cannot in any degree be distinguished, is clearly
repugnant to the common use of language.
The ordinary logic is also jealous of the explanation of negation as
relation, because seeming to take away the principle of contradiction.
Plato, as far as we know, is the first philosopher who distinctly
enunciated this principle; and though we need not suppose him to have been
always consistent with himself, there is no real inconsistency between his
explanation of the negative and the principle of contradiction. Neither
the Platonic notion of the negative as the principle of difference, nor the
Hegelian identity of Being and Not-being, at all touch the principle of
contradiction. For what is asserted about Being and Not-Being only relates
to our most abstract notions, and in no way interferes with the principle
of contradiction employed in the concrete. Because Not-being is identified
with Other, or Being with Not-being, this does not make the proposition
'Some have not eaten' any the less a contradiction of 'All have eaten.'
The explanation of the negative given by Plato in the Sophist is a true but
partial one; for the word 'not,' besides the meaning of 'other,' may also
imply 'opposition.' And difference or opposition may be either total or
partial: the not-beautiful may be other than the beautiful, or in no
relation to the beautiful, or a specific class in various degrees opposed
to the beautiful. And the negative may be a negation of fact or of thought
(ou and me). Lastly, there are certain ideas, such as 'beginning,'
'becoming,' 'the finite,' 'the abstract,' in which the negative cannot be
separated from the positive, and 'Being' and 'Not-being' are inextricably
blended.
Plato restricts the conception of Not-being to difference. Man is a
rational animal, and is not--as many other things as are not included under
this definition. He is and is not, and is because he is not. Besides the
positive class to which he belongs, there are endless negative classes to
which he may be referred. This is certainly intelligible, but useless. To
refer a subject to a negative class is unmeaning, unless the 'not' is a
mere modification of the positive, as in the example of 'not honourable'
and 'dishonourable'; or unless the class is characterized by the absence
rather than the presence of a particular quality.
Nor is it easy to see how Not-being any more than Sameness or Otherness is
one of the classes of Being. They are aspects rather than classes of
Being. Not-being can only be included in Being, as the denial of some
particular class of Being. If we attempt to pursue such airy phantoms at
all, the Hegelian identity of Being and Not-being is a more apt and
intelligible expression of the same mental phenomenon. For Plato has not
distinguished between the Being which is prior to Not-being, and the Being
which is the negation of Not-being (compare Parm.).
But he is not thinking of this when he says that Being comprehends Not-
being. Again, we should probably go back for the true explanation to the
influence which the Eleatic philosophy exercised over him. Under 'Not-
being' the Eleatic had included all the realities of the sensible world.
Led by this association and by the common use of language, which has been
already noticed, we cannot be much surprised that Plato should have made
classes of Not-being. It is observable that he does not absolutely deny
that there is an opposite of Being. He is inclined to leave the question,
merely remarking that the opposition, if admissible at all, is not
expressed by the term 'Not-being.'
On the whole, we must allow that the great service rendered by Plato to
metaphysics in the Sophist, is not his explanation of 'Not-being' as
difference. With this he certainly laid the ghost of 'Not-being'; and we
may attribute to him in a measure the credit of anticipating Spinoza and
Hegel. But his conception is not clear or consistent; he does not
recognize the different senses of the negative, and he confuses the
different classes of Not-being with the abstract notion. As the Pre-
Socratic philosopher failed to distinguish between the universal and the
true, while he placed the particulars of sense under the false and
apparent, so Plato appears to identify negation with falsehood, or is
unable to distinguish them. The greatest service rendered by him to mental
science is the recognition of the communion of classes, which, although
based by him on his account of 'Not-being,' is independent of it. He
clearly saw that the isolation of ideas or classes is the annihilation of
reasoning. Thus, after wandering in many diverging paths, we return to
common sense. And for this reason we may be inclined to do less than
justice to Plato,--because the truth which he attains by a real effort of
thought is to us a familiar and unconscious truism, which no one would any
longer think either of doubting or examining.
IV. The later dialogues of Plato contain many references to contemporary
philosophy. Both in the Theaetetus and in the Sophist he recognizes that
he is in the midst of a fray; a huge irregular battle everywhere surrounds
him (Theaet.). First, there are the two great philosophies going back into
cosmogony and poetry: the philosophy of Heracleitus, supposed to have a
poetical origin in Homer, and that of the Eleatics, which in a similar
spirit he conceives to be even older than Xenophanes (compare Protag.).
Still older were theories of two and three principles, hot and cold, moist
and dry, which were ever marrying and being given in marriage: in speaking
of these, he is probably referring to Pherecydes and the early Ionians. In
the philosophy of motion there were different accounts of the relation of
plurality and unity, which were supposed to be joined and severed by love
and hate, some maintaining that this process was perpetually going on (e.g.
Heracleitus); others (e.g. Empedocles) that there was an alternation of
them. Of the Pythagoreans or of Anaxagoras he makes no distinct mention.
His chief opponents are, first, Eristics or Megarians; secondly, the
Materialists.
The picture which he gives of both these latter schools is indistinct; and
he appears reluctant to mention the names of their teachers. Nor can we
easily determine how much is to be assigned to the Cynics, how much to the
Megarians, or whether the 'repellent Materialists' (Theaet.) are Cynics or
Atomists, or represent some unknown phase of opinion at Athens. To the
Cynics and Antisthenes is commonly attributed, on the authority of
Aristotle, the denial of predication, while the Megarians are said to have
been Nominalists, asserting the One Good under many names to be the true
Being of Zeno and the Eleatics, and, like Zeno, employing their negative
dialectic in the refutation of opponents. But the later Megarians also
denied predication; and this tenet, which is attributed to all of them by
Simplicius, is certainly in accordance with their over-refining philosophy.
The 'tyros young and old,' of whom Plato speaks, probably include both. At
any rate, we shall be safer in accepting the general description of them
which he has given, and in not attempting to draw a precise line between
them.
Of these Eristics, whether Cynics or Megarians, several characteristics are
found in Plato:--
1. They pursue verbal oppositions; 2. they make reasoning impossible by
their over-accuracy in the use of language; 3. they deny predication; 4.
they go from unity to plurality, without passing through the intermediate
stages; 5. they refuse to attribute motion or power to Being; 6. they are
the enemies of sense;--whether they are the 'friends of ideas,' who carry
on the polemic against sense, is uncertain; probably under this remarkable
expression Plato designates those who more nearly approached himself, and
may be criticizing an earlier form of his own doctrines. We may observe
(1) that he professes only to give us a few opinions out of many which were
at that time current in Greece; (2) that he nowhere alludes to the ethical
teaching of the Cynics--unless the argument in the Protagoras, that the
virtues are one and not many, may be supposed to contain a reference to
their views, as well as to those of Socrates; and unless they are the
school alluded to in the Philebus, which is described as 'being very
skilful in physics, and as maintaining pleasure to be the absence of pain.'
That Antisthenes wrote a book called 'Physicus,' is hardly a sufficient
reason for describing them as skilful in physics, which appear to have been
very alien to the tendency of the Cynics.
The Idealism of the fourth century before Christ in Greece, as in other
ages and countries, seems to have provoked a reaction towards Materialism.
The maintainers of this doctrine are described in the Theaetetus as
obstinate persons who will believe in nothing which they cannot hold in
their hands, and in the Sophist as incapable of argument. They are
probably the same who are said in the Tenth Book of the Laws to attribute
the course of events to nature, art, and chance. Who they were, we have no
means of determining except from Plato's description of them. His silence
respecting the Atomists might lead us to suppose that here we have a trace
of them. But the Atomists were not Materialists in the grosser sense of
the term, nor were they incapable of reasoning; and Plato would hardly have
described a great genius like Democritus in the disdainful terms which he
uses of the Materialists. Upon the whole, we must infer that the persons
here spoken of are unknown to us, like the many other writers and talkers
at Athens and elsewhere, of whose endless activity of mind Aristotle in his
Metaphysics has preserved an anonymous memorial.
V. The Sophist is the sequel of the Theaetetus, and is connected with the
Parmenides by a direct allusion (compare Introductions to Theaetetus and
Parmenides). In the Theaetetus we sought to discover the nature of
knowledge and false opinion. But the nature of false opinion seemed
impenetrable; for we were unable to understand how there could be any
reality in Not-being. In the Sophist the question is taken up again; the
nature of Not-being is detected, and there is no longer any metaphysical
impediment in the way of admitting the possibility of falsehood. To the
Parmenides, the Sophist stands in a less defined and more remote relation.
There human thought is in process of disorganization; no absurdity or
inconsistency is too great to be elicited from the analysis of the simple
ideas of Unity or Being. In the Sophist the same contradictions are
pursued to a certain extent, but only with a view to their resolution. The
aim of the dialogue is to show how the few elemental conceptions of the
human mind admit of a natural connexion in thought and speech, which
Megarian or other sophistry vainly attempts to deny.
...
True to the appointment of the previous day, Theodorus and Theaetetus meet
Socrates at the same spot, bringing with them an Eleatic Stranger, whom
Theodorus introduces as a true philosopher. Socrates, half in jest, half
in earnest, declares that he must be a god in disguise, who, as Homer would
say, has come to earth that he may visit the good and evil among men, and
detect the foolishness of Athenian wisdom. At any rate he is a divine
person, one of a class who are hardly recognized on earth; who appear in
divers forms--now as statesmen, now as sophists, and are often deemed
madmen. 'Philosopher, statesman, sophist,' says Socrates, repeating the
words--'I should like to ask our Eleatic friend what his countrymen think
of them; do they regard them as one, or three?'
The Stranger has been already asked the same question by Theodorus and
Theaetetus; and he at once replies that they are thought to be three; but
to explain the difference fully would take time. He is pressed to give
this fuller explanation, either in the form of a speech or of question and
answer. He prefers the latter, and chooses as his respondent Theaetetus,
whom he already knows, and who is recommended to him by Socrates.
We are agreed, he says, about the name Sophist, but we may not be equally
agreed about his nature. Great subjects should be approached through
familiar examples, and, considering that he is a creature not easily
caught, I think that, before approaching him, we should try our hand upon
some more obvious animal, who may be made the subject of logical
experiment; shall we say an angler? 'Very good.'
In the first place, the angler is an artist; and there are two kinds of
art,--productive art, which includes husbandry, manufactures, imitations;
and acquisitive art, which includes learning, trading, fighting, hunting.
The angler's is an acquisitive art, and acquisition may be effected either
by exchange or by conquest; in the latter case, either by force or craft.
Conquest by craft is called hunting, and of hunting there is one kind which
pursues inanimate, and another which pursues animate objects; and animate
objects may be either land animals or water animals, and water animals
either fly over the water or live in the water. The hunting of the last is
called fishing; and of fishing, one kind uses enclosures, catching the fish
in nets and baskets, and another kind strikes them either with spears by
night or with barbed spears or barbed hooks by day; the barbed spears are
impelled from above, the barbed hooks are jerked into the head and lips of
the fish, which are then drawn from below upwards. Thus, by a series of
divisions, we have arrived at the definition of the angler's art.
And now by the help of this example we may proceed to bring to light the
nature of the Sophist. Like the angler, he is an artist, and the
resemblance does not end here. For they are both hunters, and hunters of
animals; the one of water, and the other of land animals. But at this
point they diverge, the one going to the sea and the rivers, and the other
to the rivers of wealth and rich meadow-lands, in which generous youth
abide. On land you may hunt tame animals, or you may hunt wild animals.
And man is a tame animal, and he may be hunted either by force or
persuasion;--either by the pirate, man-stealer, soldier, or by the lawyer,
orator, talker. The latter use persuasion, and persuasion is either
private or public. Of the private practitioners of the art, some bring
gifts to those whom they hunt: these are lovers. And others take hire;
and some of these flatter, and in return are fed; others profess to teach
virtue and receive a round sum. And who are these last? Tell me who?
Have we not unearthed the Sophist?
But he is a many-sided creature, and may still be traced in another line of
descent. The acquisitive art had a branch of exchange as well as of
hunting, and exchange is either giving or selling; and the seller is either
a manufacturer or a merchant; and the merchant either retails or exports;
and the exporter may export either food for the body or food for the mind.
And of this trading in food for the mind, one kind may be termed the art of
display, and another the art of selling learning; and learning may be a
learning of the arts or of virtue. The seller of the arts may be called an
art-seller; the seller of virtue, a Sophist.
Again, there is a third line, in which a Sophist may be traced. For is he
less a Sophist when, instead of exporting his wares to another country, he
stays at home, and retails goods, which he not only buys of others, but
manufactures himself?
Or he may be descended from the acquisitive art in the combative line,
through the pugnacious, the controversial, the disputatious arts; and he
will be found at last in the eristic section of the latter, and in that
division of it which disputes in private for gain about the general
principles of right and wrong.
And still there is a track of him which has not yet been followed out by
us. Do not our household servants talk of sifting, straining, winnowing?
And they also speak of carding, spinning, and the like. All these are
processes of division; and of division there are two kinds,--one in which
like is divided from like, and another in which the good is separated from
the bad. The latter of the two is termed purification; and again, of
purification, there are two sorts,--of animate bodies (which may be
internal or external), and of inanimate. Medicine and gymnastic are the
internal purifications of the animate, and bathing the external; and of the
inanimate, fulling and cleaning and other humble processes, some of which
have ludicrous names. Not that dialectic is a respecter of names or
persons, or a despiser of humble occupations; nor does she think much of
the greater or less benefits conferred by them. For her aim is knowledge;
she wants to know how the arts are related to one another, and would quite
as soon learn the nature of hunting from the vermin-destroyer as from the
general. And she only desires to have a general name, which shall
distinguish purifications of the soul from purifications of the body.
Now purification is the taking away of evil; and there are two kinds of
evil in the soul,--the one answering to disease in the body, and the other
to deformity. Disease is the discord or war of opposite principles in the
soul; and deformity is the want of symmetry, or failure in the attainment
of a mark or measure. The latter arises from ignorance, and no one is
voluntarily ignorant; ignorance is only the aberration of the soul moving
towards knowledge. And as medicine cures the diseases and gymnastic the
deformity of the body, so correction cures the injustice, and education
(which differs among the Hellenes from mere instruction in the arts) cures
the ignorance of the soul. Again, ignorance is twofold, simple ignorance,
and ignorance having the conceit of knowledge. And education is also
twofold: there is the old-fashioned moral training of our forefathers,
which was very troublesome and not very successful; and another, of a more
subtle nature, which proceeds upon a notion that all ignorance is
involuntary. The latter convicts a man out of his own mouth, by pointing
out to him his inconsistencies and contradictions; and the consequence is
that he quarrels with himself, instead of quarrelling with his neighbours,
and is cured of prejudices and obstructions by a mode of treatment which is
equally entertaining and effectual. The physician of the soul is aware
that his patient will receive no nourishment unless he has been cleaned
out; and the soul of the Great King himself, if he has not undergone this
purification, is unclean and impure.
And who are the ministers of the purification? Sophists I may not call
them. Yet they bear about the same likeness to Sophists as the dog, who is
the gentlest of animals, does to the wolf, who is the fiercest.
Comparisons are slippery things; but for the present let us assume the
resemblance of the two, which may probably be disallowed hereafter. And
so, from division comes purification; and from this, mental purification;
and from mental purification, instruction; and from instruction, education;
and from education, the nobly-descended art of Sophistry, which is engaged
in the detection of conceit. I do not however think that we have yet found
the Sophist, or that his will ultimately prove to be the desired art of
education; but neither do I think that he can long escape me, for every way
is blocked. Before we make the final assault, let us take breath, and
reckon up the many forms which he has assumed: (1) he was the paid hunter
of wealth and birth; (2) he was the trader in the goods of the soul; (3) he
was the retailer of them; (4) he was the manufacturer of his own learned
wares; (5) he was the disputant; and (6) he was the purger away of
prejudices--although this latter point is admitted to be doubtful.
Now, there must surely be something wrong in the professor of any art
having so many names and kinds of knowledge. Does not the very number of
them imply that the nature of his art is not understood? And that we may
not be involved in the misunderstanding, let us observe which of his
characteristics is the most prominent. Above all things he is a disputant.
He will dispute and teach others to dispute about things visible and
invisible--about man, about the gods, about politics, about law, about
wrestling, about all things. But can he know all things? 'He cannot.'
How then can he dispute satisfactorily with any one who knows?
'Impossible.' Then what is the trick of his art, and why does he receive
money from his admirers? 'Because he is believed by them to know all
things.' You mean to say that he seems to have a knowledge of them?
'Yes.'
Suppose a person were to say, not that he would dispute about all things,
but that he would make all things, you and me, and all other creatures, the
earth and the heavens and the gods, and would sell them all for a few
pence--this would be a great jest; but not greater than if he said that he
knew all things, and could teach them in a short time, and at a small cost.
For all imitation is a jest, and the most graceful form of jest. Now the
painter is a man who professes to make all things, and children, who see
his pictures at a distance, sometimes take them for realities: and the
Sophist pretends to know all things, and he, too, can deceive young men,
who are still at a distance from the truth, not through their eyes, but
through their ears, by the mummery of words, and induce them to believe
him. But as they grow older, and come into contact with realities, they
learn by experience the futility of his pretensions. The Sophist, then,
has not real knowledge; he is only an imitator, or image-maker.
And now, having got him in a corner of the dialectical net, let us divide
and subdivide until we catch him. Of image-making there are two kinds,--
the art of making likenesses, and the art of making appearances. The
latter may be illustrated by sculpture and painting, which often use
illusions, and alter the proportions of figures, in order to adapt their
works to the eye. And the Sophist also uses illusions, and his imitations
are apparent and not real. But how can anything be an appearance only?
Here arises a difficulty which has always beset the subject of appearances.
For the argument is asserting the existence of not-being. And this is what
the great Parmenides was all his life denying in prose and also in verse.
'You will never find,' he says, 'that not-being is.' And the words prove
themselves! Not-being cannot be attributed to any being; for how can any
being be wholly abstracted from being? Again, in every predication there
is an attribution of singular or plural. But number is the most real of
all things, and cannot be attributed to not-being. Therefore not-being
cannot be predicated or expressed; for how can we say 'is,' 'are not,'
without number?
And now arises the greatest difficulty of all. If not-being is
inconceivable, how can not-being be refuted? And am I not contradicting
myself at this moment, in speaking either in the singular or the plural of
that to which I deny both plurality and unity? You, Theaetetus, have the
might of youth, and I conjure you to exert yourself, and, if you can, to
find an expression for not-being which does not imply being and number.
'But I cannot.' Then the Sophist must be left in his hole. We may call
him an image-maker if we please, but he will only say, 'And pray, what is
an image?' And we shall reply, 'A reflection in the water, or in a
mirror'; and he will say, 'Let us shut our eyes and open our minds; what is
the common notion of all images?' 'I should answer, Such another, made in
the likeness of the true.' Real or not real? 'Not real; at least, not in
a true sense.' And the real 'is,' and the not-real 'is not'? 'Yes.' Then
a likeness is really unreal, and essentially not. Here is a pretty
complication of being and not-being, in which the many-headed Sophist has
entangled us. He will at once point out that he is compelling us to
contradict ourselves, by affirming being of not-being. I think that we
must cease to look for him in the class of imitators.
But ought we to give him up? 'I should say, certainly not.' Then I fear
that I must lay hands on my father Parmenides; but do not call me a
parricide; for there is no way out of the difficulty except to show that in
some sense not-being is; and if this is not admitted, no one can speak of
falsehood, or false opinion, or imitation, without falling into a
contradiction. You observe how unwilling I am to undertake the task; for I
know that I am exposing myself to the charge of inconsistency in asserting
the being of not-being. But if I am to make the attempt, I think that I
had better begin at the beginning.
Lightly in the days of our youth, Parmenides and others told us tales about
the origin of the universe: one spoke of three principles warring and at
peace again, marrying and begetting children; another of two principles,
hot and cold, dry and moist, which also formed relationships. There were
the Eleatics in our part of the world, saying that all things are one;
whose doctrine begins with Xenophanes, and is even older. Ionian, and,
more recently, Sicilian muses speak of a one and many which are held
together by enmity and friendship, ever parting, ever meeting. Some of
them do not insist on the perpetual strife, but adopt a gentler strain, and
speak of alternation only. Whether they are right or not, who can say?
But one thing we can say--that they went on their way without much caring
whether we understood them or not. For tell me, Theaetetus, do you
understand what they mean by their assertion of unity, or by their
combinations and separations of two or more principles? I used to think,
when I was young, that I knew all about not-being, and now I am in great
difficulties even about being.
Let us proceed first to the examination of being. Turning to the dualist
philosophers, we say to them: Is being a third element besides hot and
cold? or do you identify one or both of the two elements with being? At
any rate, you can hardly avoid resolving them into one. Let us next
interrogate the patrons of the one. To them we say: Are being and one two
different names for the same thing? But how can there be two names when
there is nothing but one? Or you may identify them; but then the name will
be either the name of nothing or of itself, i.e. of a name. Again, the
notion of being is conceived of as a whole--in the words of Parmenides,
'like every way unto a rounded sphere.' And a whole has parts; but that
which has parts is not one, for unity has no parts. Is being, then, one,
because the parts of being are one, or shall we say that being is not a
whole? In the former case, one is made up of parts; and in the latter
there is still plurality, viz. being, and a whole which is apart from
being. And being, if not all things, lacks something of the nature of
being, and becomes not-being. Nor can being ever have come into existence,
for nothing comes into existence except as a whole; nor can being have
number, for that which has number is a whole or sum of number. These are a
few of the difficulties which are accumulating one upon another in the
consideration of being.
We may proceed now to the less exact sort of philosophers. Some of them
drag down everything to earth, and carry on a war like that of the giants,
grasping rocks and oaks in their hands. Their adversaries defend
themselves warily from an invisible world, and reduce the substances of
their opponents to the minutest fractions, until they are lost in
generation and flux. The latter sort are civil people enough; but the
materialists are rude and ignorant of dialectics; they must be taught how
to argue before they can answer. Yet, for the sake of the argument, we may
assume them to be better than they are, and able to give an account of
themselves. They admit the existence of a mortal living creature, which is
a body containing a soul, and to this they would not refuse to attribute
qualities--wisdom, folly, justice and injustice. The soul, as they say,
has a kind of body, but they do not like to assert of these qualities of
the soul, either that they are corporeal, or that they have no existence;
at this point they begin to make distinctions. 'Sons of earth,' we say to
them, 'if both visible and invisible qualities exist, what is the common
nature which is attributed to them by the term "being" or "existence"?'
And, as they are incapable of answering this question, we may as well reply
for them, that being is the power of doing or suffering. Then we turn to
the friends of ideas: to them we say, 'You distinguish becoming from
being?' 'Yes,' they will reply. 'And in becoming you participate through
the bodily senses, and in being, by thought and the mind?' 'Yes.' And you
mean by the word 'participation' a power of doing or suffering? To this
they answer--I am acquainted with them, Theaetetus, and know their ways
better than you do--that being can neither do nor suffer, though becoming
may. And we rejoin: Does not the soul know? And is not 'being' known?
And are not 'knowing' and 'being known' active and passive? That which is
known is affected by knowledge, and therefore is in motion. And, indeed,
how can we imagine that perfect being is a mere everlasting form, devoid of
motion and soul? for there can be no thought without soul, nor can soul be
devoid of motion. But neither can thought or mind be devoid of some
principle of rest or stability. And as children say entreatingly, 'Give us
both,' so the philosopher must include both the moveable and immoveable in
his idea of being. And yet, alas! he and we are in the same difficulty
with which we reproached the dualists; for motion and rest are
contradictions--how then can they both exist? Does he who affirms this
mean to say that motion is rest, or rest motion? 'No; he means to assert
the existence of some third thing, different from them both, which neither
rests nor moves.' But how can there be anything which neither rests nor
moves? Here is a second difficulty about being, quite as great as that
about not-being. And we may hope that any light which is thrown upon the
one may extend to the other.
Leaving them for the present, let us enquire what we mean by giving many
names to the same thing, e.g. white, good, tall, to man; out of which tyros
old and young derive such a feast of amusement. Their meagre minds refuse
to predicate anything of anything; they say that good is good, and man is
man; and that to affirm one of the other would be making the many one and
the one many. Let us place them in a class with our previous opponents,
and interrogate both of them at once. Shall we assume (1) that being and
rest and motion, and all other things, are incommunicable with one another?
or (2) that they all have indiscriminate communion? or (3) that there is
communion of some and not of others? And we will consider the first
hypothesis first of all.
(1) If we suppose the universal separation of kinds, all theories alike are
swept away; the patrons of a single principle of rest or of motion, or of a
plurality of immutable ideas--all alike have the ground cut from under
them; and all creators of the universe by theories of composition and
division, whether out of or into a finite or infinite number of elemental
forms, in alternation or continuance, share the same fate. Most ridiculous
is the discomfiture which attends the opponents of predication, who, like
the ventriloquist Eurycles, have the voice that answers them in their own
breast. For they cannot help using the words 'is,' 'apart,' 'from others,'
and the like; and their adversaries are thus saved the trouble of refuting
them. But (2) if all things have communion with all things, motion will
rest, and rest will move; here is a reductio ad absurdum. Two out of the
three hypotheses are thus seen to be false. The third (3) remains, which
affirms that only certain things communicate with certain other things. In
the alphabet and the scale there are some letters and notes which combine
with others, and some which do not; and the laws according to which they
combine or are separated are known to the grammarian and musician. And
there is a science which teaches not only what notes and letters, but what
classes admit of combination with one another, and what not. This is a
noble science, on which we have stumbled unawares; in seeking after the
Sophist we have found the philosopher. He is the master who discerns one
whole or form pervading a scattered multitude, and many such wholes
combined under a higher one, and many entirely apart--he is the true
dialectician. Like the Sophist, he is hard to recognize, though for the
opposite reasons; the Sophist runs away into the obscurity of not-being,
the philosopher is dark from excess of light. And now, leaving him, we
will return to our pursuit of the Sophist.
Agreeing in the truth of the third hypothesis, that some things have
communion and others not, and that some may have communion with all, let us
examine the most important kinds which are capable of admixture; and in
this way we may perhaps find out a sense in which not-being may be affirmed
to have being. Now the highest kinds are being, rest, motion; and of
these, rest and motion exclude each other, but both of them are included in
being; and again, they are the same with themselves and the other of each
other. What is the meaning of these words, 'same' and 'other'? Are there
two more kinds to be added to the three others? For sameness cannot be
either rest or motion, because predicated both of rest and motion; nor yet
being; because if being were attributed to both of them we should attribute
sameness to both of them. Nor can other be identified with being; for then
other, which is relative, would have the absoluteness of being. Therefore
we must assume a fifth principle, which is universal, and runs through all
things, for each thing is other than all other things. Thus there are five
principles: (1) being, (2) motion, which is not (3) rest, and because
participating both in the same and other, is and is not (4) the same with
itself, and is and is not (5) other than the other. And motion is not
being, but partakes of being, and therefore is and is not in the most
absolute sense. Thus we have discovered that not-being is the principle of
the other which runs through all things, being not excepted. And 'being'
is one thing, and 'not-being' includes and is all other things. And not-
being is not the opposite of being, but only the other. Knowledge has many
branches, and the other or difference has as many, each of which is
described by prefixing the word 'not' to some kind of knowledge. The not-
beautiful is as real as the beautiful, the not-just as the just. And the
essence of the not-beautiful is to be separated from and opposed to a
certain kind of existence which is termed beautiful. And this opposition
and negation is the not-being of which we are in search, and is one kind of
being. Thus, in spite of Parmenides, we have not only discovered the
existence, but also the nature of not-being--that nature we have found to
be relation. In the communion of different kinds, being and other mutually
interpenetrate; other is, but is other than being, and other than each and
all of the remaining kinds, and therefore in an infinity of ways 'is not.'
And the argument has shown that the pursuit of contradictions is childish
and useless, and the very opposite of that higher spirit which criticizes
the words of another according to the natural meaning of them. Nothing can
be more unphilosophical than the denial of all communion of kinds. And we
are fortunate in having established such a communion for another reason,
because in continuing the hunt after the Sophist we have to examine the
nature of discourse, and there could be no discourse if there were no
communion. For the Sophist, although he can no longer deny the existence
of not-being, may still affirm that not-being cannot enter into discourse,
and as he was arguing before that there could be no such thing as
falsehood, because there was no such thing as not-being, he may continue to
argue that there is no such thing as the art of image-making and
phantastic, because not-being has no place in language. Hence arises the
necessity of examining speech, opinion, and imagination.
And first concerning speech; let us ask the same question about words which
we have already answered about the kinds of being and the letters of the
alphabet: To what extent do they admit of combination? Some words have a
meaning when combined, and others have no meaning. One class of words
describes action, another class agents: 'walks,' 'runs,' 'sleeps' are
examples of the first; 'stag,' 'horse,' 'lion' of the second. But no
combination of words can be formed without a verb and a noun, e.g. 'A man
learns'; the simplest sentence is composed of two words, and one of these
must be a subject. For example, in the sentence, 'Theaetetus sits,' which
is not very long, 'Theaetetus' is the subject, and in the sentence
'Theaetetus flies,' 'Theaetetus' is again the subject. But the two
sentences differ in quality, for the first says of you that which is true,
and the second says of you that which is not true, or, in other words,
attributes to you things which are not as though they were. Here is false
discourse in the shortest form. And thus not only speech, but thought and
opinion and imagination are proved to be both true and false. For thought
is only the process of silent speech, and opinion is only the silent assent
or denial which follows this, and imagination is only the expression of
this in some form of sense. All of them are akin to speech, and therefore,
like speech, admit of true and false. And we have discovered false
opinion, which is an encouraging sign of our probable success in the rest
of the enquiry.
Then now let us return to our old division of likeness-making and
phantastic. When we were going to place the Sophist in one of them, a
doubt arose whether there could be such a thing as an appearance, because
there was no such thing as falsehood. At length falsehood has been
discovered by us to exist, and we have acknowledged that the Sophist is to
be found in the class of imitators. All art was divided originally by us
into two branches--productive and acquisitive. And now we may divide both
on a different principle into the creations or imitations which are of
human, and those which are of divine, origin. For we must admit that the
world and ourselves and the animals did not come into existence by chance,
or the spontaneous working of nature, but by divine reason and knowledge.
And there are not only divine creations but divine imitations, such as
apparitions and shadows and reflections, which are equally the work of a
divine mind. And there are human creations and human imitations too,--
there is the actual house and the drawing of it. Nor must we forget that
image-making may be an imitation of realities or an imitation of
appearances, which last has been called by us phantastic. And this
phantastic may be again divided into imitation by the help of instruments
and impersonations. And the latter may be either dissembling or
unconscious, either with or without knowledge. A man cannot imitate you,
Theaetetus, without knowing you, but he can imitate the form of justice or
virtue if he have a sentiment or opinion about them. Not being well
provided with names, the former I will venture to call the imitation of
science, and the latter the imitation of opinion.
The latter is our present concern, for the Sophist has no claims to science
or knowledge. Now the imitator, who has only opinion, may be either the
simple imitator, who thinks that he knows, or the dissembler, who is
conscious that he does not know, but disguises his ignorance. And the last
may be either a maker of long speeches, or of shorter speeches which compel
the person conversing to contradict himself. The maker of longer speeches
is the popular orator; the maker of the shorter is the Sophist, whose art
may be traced as being the
/
contradictious
/
dissembling
/
without knowledge
/
human and not divine
/
juggling with words
/
phantastic or unreal
/
art of image-making.
...
In commenting on the dialogue in which Plato most nearly approaches the
great modern master of metaphysics there are several points which it will
be useful to consider, such as the unity of opposites, the conception of
the ideas as causes, and the relation of the Platonic and Hegelian
dialectic.
The unity of opposites was the crux of ancient thinkers in the age of
Plato: How could one thing be or become another? That substances have
attributes was implied in common language; that heat and cold, day and
night, pass into one another was a matter of experience 'on a level with
the cobbler's understanding' (Theat.). But how could philosophy explain
the connexion of ideas, how justify the passing of them into one another?
The abstractions of one, other, being, not-being, rest, motion, individual,
universal, which successive generations of philosophers had recently
discovered, seemed to be beyond the reach of human thought, like stars
shining in a distant heaven. They were the symbols of different schools of
philosophy: but in what relation did they stand to one another and to the
world of sense? It was hardly conceivable that one could be other, or the
same different. Yet without some reconciliation of these elementary ideas
thought was impossible. There was no distinction between truth and
falsehood, between the Sophist and the philosopher. Everything could be
predicated of everything, or nothing of anything. To these difficulties
Plato finds what to us appears to be the answer of common sense--that Not-
being is the relative or other of Being, the defining and distinguishing
principle, and that some ideas combine with others, but not all with all.
It is remarkable however that he offers this obvious reply only as the
result of a long and tedious enquiry; by a great effort he is able to look
down as 'from a height' on the 'friends of the ideas' as well as on the
pre-Socratic philosophies. Yet he is merely asserting principles which no
one who could be made to understand them would deny.
The Platonic unity of differences or opposites is the beginning of the
modern view that all knowledge is of relations; it also anticipates the
doctrine of Spinoza that all determination is negation. Plato takes or
gives so much of either of these theories as was necessary or possible in
the age in which he lived. In the Sophist, as in the Cratylus, he is
opposed to the Heracleitean flux and equally to the Megarian and Cynic
denial of predication, because he regards both of them as making knowledge
impossible. He does not assert that everything is and is not, or that the
same thing can be affected in the same and in opposite ways at the same
time and in respect of the same part of itself. The law of contradiction
is as clearly laid down by him in the Republic, as by Aristotle in his
Organon. Yet he is aware that in the negative there is also a positive
element, and that oppositions may be only differences. And in the
Parmenides he deduces the many from the one and Not-being from Being, and
yet shows that the many are included in the one, and that Not-being returns
to Being.
In several of the later dialogues Plato is occupied with the connexion of
the sciences, which in the Philebus he divides into two classes of pure and
applied, adding to them there as elsewhere (Phaedr., Crat., Republic,
States.) a superintending science of dialectic. This is the origin of
Aristotle's Architectonic, which seems, however, to have passed into an
imaginary science of essence, and no longer to retain any relation to other
branches of knowledge. Of such a science, whether described as
'philosophia prima,' the science of ousia, logic or metaphysics,
philosophers have often dreamed. But even now the time has not arrived
when the anticipation of Plato can be realized. Though many a thinker has
framed a 'hierarchy of the sciences,' no one has as yet found the higher
science which arrays them in harmonious order, giving to the organic and
inorganic, to the physical and moral, their respective limits, and showing
how they all work together in the world and in man.
Plato arranges in order the stages of knowledge and of existence. They are
the steps or grades by which he rises from sense and the shadows of sense
to the idea of beauty and good. Mind is in motion as well as at rest
(Soph.); and may be described as a dialectical progress which passes from
one limit or determination of thought to another and back again to the
first. This is the account of dialectic given by Plato in the Sixth Book
of the Republic, which regarded under another aspect is the mysticism of
the Symposium. He does not deny the existence of objects of sense, but
according to him they only receive their true meaning when they are
incorporated in a principle which is above them (Republic). In modern
language they might be said to come first in the order of experience, last
in the order of nature and reason. They are assumed, as he is fond of
repeating, upon the condition that they shall give an account of themselves
and that the truth of their existence shall be hereafter proved. For
philosophy must begin somewhere and may begin anywhere,--with outward
objects, with statements of opinion, with abstract principles. But objects
of sense must lead us onward to the ideas or universals which are contained
in them; the statements of opinion must be verified; the abstract
principles must be filled up and connected with one another. In Plato we
find, as we might expect, the germs of many thoughts which have been
further developed by the genius of Spinoza and Hegel. But there is a
difficulty in separating the germ from the flower, or in drawing the line
which divides ancient from modern philosophy. Many coincidences which
occur in them are unconscious, seeming to show a natural tendency in the
human mind towards certain ideas and forms of thought. And there are many
speculations of Plato which would have passed away unheeded, and their
meaning, like that of some hieroglyphic, would have remained undeciphered,
unless two thousand years and more afterwards an interpreter had arisen of
a kindred spirit and of the same intellectual family. For example, in the
Sophist Plato begins with the abstract and goes on to the concrete, not in
the lower sense of returning to outward objects, but to the Hegelian
concrete or unity of abstractions. In the intervening period hardly any
importance would have been attached to the question which is so full of
meaning to Plato and Hegel.
They differ however in their manner of regarding the question. For Plato
is answering a difficulty; he is seeking to justify the use of common
language and of ordinary thought into which philosophy had introduced a
principle of doubt and dissolution. Whereas Hegel tries to go beyond
common thought, and to combine abstractions in a higher unity: the
ordinary mechanism of language and logic is carried by him into another
region in which all oppositions are absorbed and all contradictions
affirmed, only that they may be done away with. But Plato, unlike Hegel,
nowhere bases his system on the unity of opposites, although in the
Parmenides he shows an Hegelian subtlety in the analysis of one and Being.
It is difficult within the compass of a few pages to give even a faint
outline of the Hegelian dialectic. No philosophy which is worth
understanding can be understood in a moment; common sense will not teach us
metaphysics any more than mathematics. If all sciences demand of us
protracted study and attention, the highest of all can hardly be matter of
immediate intuition. Neither can we appreciate a great system without
yielding a half assent to it--like flies we are caught in the spider's web;
and we can only judge of it truly when we place ourselves at a distance
from it. Of all philosophies Hegelianism is the most obscure: and the
difficulty inherent in the subject is increased by the use of a technical
language. The saying of Socrates respecting the writings of Heracleitus--
'Noble is that which I understand, and that which I do not understand may
be as noble; but the strength of a Delian diver is needed to swim through
it'--expresses the feeling with which the reader rises from the perusal of
Hegel. We may truly apply to him the words in which Plato describes the
Pre-Socratic philosophers: 'He went on his way rather regardless of
whether we understood him or not'; or, as he is reported himself to have
said of his own pupils: 'There is only one of you who understands me, and
he does NOT understand me.'
Nevertheless the consideration of a few general aspects of the Hegelian
philosophy may help to dispel some errors and to awaken an interest about
it. (i) It is an ideal philosophy which, in popular phraseology, maintains
not matter but mind to be the truth of things, and this not by a mere crude
substitution of one word for another, but by showing either of them to be
the complement of the other. Both are creations of thought, and the
difference in kind which seems to divide them may also be regarded as a
difference of degree. One is to the other as the real to the ideal, and
both may be conceived together under the higher form of the notion. (ii)
Under another aspect it views all the forms of sense and knowledge as
stages of thought which have always existed implicitly and unconsciously,
and to which the mind of the world, gradually disengaged from sense, has
become awakened. The present has been the past. The succession in time of
human ideas is also the eternal 'now'; it is historical and also a divine
ideal. The history of philosophy stripped of personality and of the other
accidents of time and place is gathered up into philosophy, and again
philosophy clothed in circumstance expands into history. (iii) Whether
regarded as present or past, under the form of time or of eternity, the
spirit of dialectic is always moving onwards from one determination of
thought to another, receiving each successive system of philosophy and
subordinating it to that which follows--impelled by an irresistible
necessity from one idea to another until the cycle of human thought and
existence is complete. It follows from this that all previous philosophies
which are worthy of the name are not mere opinions or speculations, but
stages or moments of thought which have a necessary place in the world of
mind. They are no longer the last word of philosophy, for another and
another has succeeded them, but they still live and are mighty; in the
language of the Greek poet, 'There is a great God in them, and he grows not
old.' (iv) This vast ideal system is supposed to be based upon experience.
At each step it professes to carry with it the 'witness of eyes and ears'
and of common sense, as well as the internal evidence of its own
consistency; it has a place for every science, and affirms that no
philosophy of a narrower type is capable of comprehending all true facts.
The Hegelian dialectic may be also described as a movement from the simple
to the complex. Beginning with the generalizations of sense, (1) passing
through ideas of quality, quantity, measure, number, and the like, (2)
ascending from presentations, that is pictorial forms of sense, to
representations in which the picture vanishes and the essence is detached
in thought from the outward form, (3) combining the I and the not-I, or the
subject and object, the natural order of thought is at last found to
include the leading ideas of the sciences and to arrange them in relation
to one another. Abstractions grow together and again become concrete in a
new and higher sense. They also admit of development from within their own
spheres. Everywhere there is a movement of attraction and repulsion going
on--an attraction or repulsion of ideas of which the physical phenomenon
described under a similar name is a figure. Freedom and necessity, mind
and matter, the continuous and the discrete, cause and effect, are
perpetually being severed from one another in thought, only to be
perpetually reunited. The finite and infinite, the absolute and relative
are not really opposed; the finite and the negation of the finite are alike
lost in a higher or positive infinity, and the absolute is the sum or
correlation of all relatives. When this reconciliation of opposites is
finally completed in all its stages, the mind may come back again and
review the things of sense, the opinions of philosophers, the strife of
theology and politics, without being disturbed by them. Whatever is, if
not the very best--and what is the best, who can tell?--is, at any rate,
historical and rational, suitable to its own age, unsuitable to any other.
Nor can any efforts of speculative thinkers or of soldiers and statesmen
materially quicken the 'process of the suns.'
Hegel was quite sensible how great would be the difficulty of presenting
philosophy to mankind under the form of opposites. Most of us live in the
one-sided truth which the understanding offers to us, and if occasionally
we come across difficulties like the time-honoured controversy of necessity
and free-will, or the Eleatic puzzle of Achilles and the tortoise, we
relegate some of them to the sphere of mystery, others to the book of
riddles, and go on our way rejoicing. Most men (like Aristotle) have been
accustomed to regard a contradiction in terms as the end of strife; to be
told that contradiction is the life and mainspring of the intellectual
world is indeed a paradox to them. Every abstraction is at first the enemy
of every other, yet they are linked together, each with all, in the chain
of Being. The struggle for existence is not confined to the animals, but
appears in the kingdom of thought. The divisions which arise in thought
between the physical and moral and between the moral and intellectual, and
the like, are deepened and widened by the formal logic which elevates the
defects of the human faculties into Laws of Thought; they become a part of
the mind which makes them and is also made up of them. Such distinctions
become so familiar to us that we regard the thing signified by them as
absolutely fixed and defined. These are some of the illusions from which
Hegel delivers us by placing us above ourselves, by teaching us to analyze
the growth of 'what we are pleased to call our minds,' by reverting to a
time when our present distinctions of thought and language had no
existence.
Of the great dislike and childish impatience of his system which would be
aroused among his opponents, he was fully aware, and would often anticipate
the jests which the rest of the world, 'in the superfluity of their wits,'
were likely to make upon him. Men are annoyed at what puzzles them; they
think what they cannot easily understand to be full of danger. Many a
sceptic has stood, as he supposed, firmly rooted in the categories of the
understanding which Hegel resolves into their original nothingness. For,
like Plato, he 'leaves no stone unturned' in the intellectual world. Nor
can we deny that he is unnecessarily difficult, or that his own mind, like
that of all metaphysicians, was too much under the dominion of his system
and unable to see beyond: or that the study of philosophy, if made a
serious business (compare Republic), involves grave results to the mind and
life of the student. For it may encumber him without enlightening his
path; and it may weaken his natural faculties of thought and expression
without increasing his philosophical power. The mind easily becomes
entangled among abstractions, and loses hold of facts. The glass which is
adapted to distant objects takes away the vision of what is near and
present to us.
To Hegel, as to the ancient Greek thinkers, philosophy was a religion, a
principle of life as well as of knowledge, like the idea of good in the
Sixth Book of the Republic, a cause as well as an effect, the source of
growth as well as of light. In forms of thought which by most of us are
regarded as mere categories, he saw or thought that he saw a gradual
revelation of the Divine Being. He would have been said by his opponents
to have confused God with the history of philosophy, and to have been
incapable of distinguishing ideas from facts. And certainly we can
scarcely understand how a deep thinker like Hegel could have hoped to
revive or supplant the old traditional faith by an unintelligible
abstraction: or how he could have imagined that philosophy consisted only
or chiefly in the categories of logic. For abstractions, though combined
by him in the notion, seem to be never really concrete; they are a
metaphysical anatomy, not a living and thinking substance. Though we are
reminded by him again and again that we are gathering up the world in
ideas, we feel after all that we have not really spanned the gulf which
separates phainomena from onta.
Having in view some of these difficulties, he seeks--and we may follow his
example--to make the understanding of his system easier (a) by
illustrations, and (b) by pointing out the coincidence of the speculative
idea and the historical order of thought.
(a) If we ask how opposites can coexist, we are told that many different
qualities inhere in a flower or a tree or in any other concrete object, and
that any conception of space or matter or time involves the two
contradictory attributes of divisibility and continuousness. We may ponder
over the thought of number, reminding ourselves that every unit both
implies and denies the existence of every other, and that the one is many--
a sum of fractions, and the many one--a sum of units. We may be reminded
that in nature there is a centripetal as well as a centrifugal force, a
regulator as well as a spring, a law of attraction as well as of repulsion.
The way to the West is the way also to the East; the north pole of the
magnet cannot be divided from the south pole; two minus signs make a plus
in Arithmetic and Algebra. Again, we may liken the successive layers of
thought to the deposits of geological strata which were once fluid and are
now solid, which were at one time uppermost in the series and are now
hidden in the earth; or to the successive rinds or barks of trees which
year by year pass inward; or to the ripple of water which appears and
reappears in an ever-widening circle. Or our attention may be drawn to
ideas which the moment we analyze them involve a contradiction, such as
'beginning' or 'becoming,' or to the opposite poles, as they are sometimes
termed, of necessity and freedom, of idea and fact. We may be told to
observe that every negative is a positive, that differences of kind are
resolvable into differences of degree, and that differences of degree may
be heightened into differences of kind. We may remember the common remark
that there is much to be said on both sides of a question. We may be
recommended to look within and to explain how opposite ideas can coexist in
our own minds; and we may be told to imagine the minds of all mankind as
one mind in which the true ideas of all ages and countries inhere. In our
conception of God in his relation to man or of any union of the divine and
human nature, a contradiction appears to be unavoidable. Is not the
reconciliation of mind and body a necessity, not only of speculation but of
practical life? Reflections such as these will furnish the best
preparation and give the right attitude of mind for understanding the
Hegelian philosophy.
(b) Hegel's treatment of the early Greek thinkers affords the readiest
illustration of his meaning in conceiving all philosophy under the form of
opposites. The first abstraction is to him the beginning of thought.
Hitherto there had only existed a tumultuous chaos of mythological fancy,
but when Thales said 'All is water' a new era began to dawn upon the world.
Man was seeking to grasp the universe under a single form which was at
first simply a material element, the most equable and colourless and
universal which could be found. But soon the human mind became
dissatisfied with the emblem, and after ringing the changes on one element
after another, demanded a more abstract and perfect conception, such as one
or Being, which was absolutely at rest. But the positive had its negative,
the conception of Being involved Not-being, the conception of one, many,
the conception of a whole, parts. Then the pendulum swung to the other
side, from rest to motion, from Xenophanes to Heracleitus. The opposition
of Being and Not-being projected into space became the atoms and void of
Leucippus and Democritus. Until the Atomists, the abstraction of the
individual did not exist; in the philosophy of Anaxagoras the idea of mind,
whether human or divine, was beginning to be realized. The pendulum gave
another swing, from the individual to the universal, from the object to the
subject. The Sophist first uttered the word 'Man is the measure of all
things,' which Socrates presented in a new form as the study of ethics.
Once more we return from mind to the object of mind, which is knowledge,
and out of knowledge the various degrees or kinds of knowledge more or less
abstract were gradually developed. The threefold division of logic,
physic, and ethics, foreshadowed in Plato, was finally established by
Aristotle and the Stoics. Thus, according to Hegel, in the course of about
two centuries by a process of antagonism and negation the leading thoughts
of philosophy were evolved.
There is nothing like this progress of opposites in Plato, who in the
Symposium denies the possibility of reconciliation until the opposition has
passed away. In his own words, there is an absurdity in supposing that
'harmony is discord; for in reality harmony consists of notes of a higher
and lower pitch which disagreed once, but are now reconciled by the art of
music' (Symp.). He does indeed describe objects of sense as regarded by us
sometimes from one point of view and sometimes from another. As he says at
the end of the Fifth Book of the Republic, 'There is nothing light which is
not heavy, or great which is not small.' And he extends this relativity to
the conceptions of just and good, as well as to great and small. In like
manner he acknowledges that the same number may be more or less in relation
to other numbers without any increase or diminution (Theat.). But the
perplexity only arises out of the confusion of the human faculties; the art
of measuring shows us what is truly great and truly small. Though the just
and good in particular instances may vary, the IDEA of good is eternal and
unchangeable. And the IDEA of good is the source of knowledge and also of
Being, in which all the stages of sense and knowledge are gathered up and
from being hypotheses become realities.
Leaving the comparison with Plato we may now consider the value of this
invention of Hegel. There can be no question of the importance of showing
that two contraries or contradictories may in certain cases be both true.
The silliness of the so-called laws of thought ('All A = A,' or, in the
negative form, 'Nothing can at the same time be both A, and not A') has
been well exposed by Hegel himself (Wallace's Hegel), who remarks that 'the
form of the maxim is virtually self-contradictory, for a proposition
implies a distinction between subject and predicate, whereas the maxim of
identity, as it is called, A = A, does not fulfil what its form requires.
Nor does any mind ever think or form conceptions in accordance with this
law, nor does any existence conform to it.' Wisdom of this sort is well
parodied in Shakespeare (Twelfth Night, 'Clown: For as the old hermit of
Prague, that never saw pen and ink, very wittily said to a niece of King
Gorboduc, "That that is is"...for what is "that" but "that," and "is" but
"is"?'). Unless we are willing to admit that two contradictories may be
true, many questions which lie at the threshold of mathematics and of
morals will be insoluble puzzles to us.
The influence of opposites is felt in practical life. The understanding
sees one side of a question only--the common sense of mankind joins one of
two parties in politics, in religion, in philosophy. Yet, as everybody
knows, truth is not wholly the possession of either. But the characters of
men are one-sided and accept this or that aspect of the truth. The
understanding is strong in a single abstract principle and with this lever
moves mankind. Few attain to a balance of principles or recognize truly
how in all human things there is a thesis and antithesis, a law of action
and of reaction. In politics we require order as well as liberty, and have
to consider the proportions in which under given circumstances they may be
safely combined. In religion there is a tendency to lose sight of
morality, to separate goodness from the love of truth, to worship God
without attempting to know him. In philosophy again there are two opposite
principles, of immediate experience and of those general or a priori truths
which are supposed to transcend experience. But the common sense or common
opinion of mankind is incapable of apprehending these opposite sides or
views--men are determined by their natural bent to one or other of them;
they go straight on for a time in a single line, and may be many things by
turns but not at once.
Hence the importance of familiarizing the mind with forms which will assist
us in conceiving or expressing the complex or contrary aspects of life and
nature. The danger is that they may be too much for us, and obscure our
appreciation of facts. As the complexity of mechanics cannot be understood
without mathematics, so neither can the many-sidedness of the mental and
moral world be truly apprehended without the assistance of new forms of
thought. One of these forms is the unity of opposites. Abstractions have
a great power over us, but they are apt to be partial and one-sided, and
only when modified by other abstractions do they make an approach to the
truth. Many a man has become a fatalist because he has fallen under the
dominion of a single idea. He says to himself, for example, that he must
be either free or necessary--he cannot be both. Thus in the ancient world
whole schools of philosophy passed away in the vain attempt to solve the
problem of the continuity or divisibility of matter. And in comparatively
modern times, though in the spirit of an ancient philosopher, Bishop
Berkeley, feeling a similar perplexity, is inclined to deny the truth of
infinitesimals in mathematics. Many difficulties arise in practical
religion from the impossibility of conceiving body and mind at once and in
adjusting their movements to one another. There is a border ground between
them which seems to belong to both; and there is as much difficulty in
conceiving the body without the soul as the soul without the body. To the
'either' and 'or' philosophy ('Everything is either A or not A') should at
least be added the clause 'or neither,' 'or both.' The double form makes
reflection easier and more conformable to experience, and also more
comprehensive. But in order to avoid paradox and the danger of giving
offence to the unmetaphysical part of mankind, we may speak of it as due to
the imperfection of language or the limitation of human faculties. It is
nevertheless a discovery which, in Platonic language, may be termed a 'most
gracious aid to thought.'
The doctrine of opposite moments of thought or of progression by
antagonism, further assists us in framing a scheme or system of the
sciences. The negation of one gives birth to another of them. The double
notions are the joints which hold them together. The simple is developed
into the complex, the complex returns again into the simple. Beginning
with the highest notion of mind or thought, we may descend by a series of
negations to the first generalizations of sense. Or again we may begin
with the simplest elements of sense and proceed upwards to the highest
being or thought. Metaphysic is the negation or absorption of physiology--
physiology of chemistry--chemistry of mechanical philosophy. Similarly in
mechanics, when we can no further go we arrive at chemistry--when chemistry
becomes organic we arrive at physiology: when we pass from the outward and
animal to the inward nature of man we arrive at moral and metaphysical
philosophy. These sciences have each of them their own methods and are
pursued independently of one another. But to the mind of the thinker they
are all one--latent in one another--developed out of one another.
This method of opposites has supplied new instruments of thought for the
solution of metaphysical problems, and has thrown down many of the walls
within which the human mind was confined. Formerly when philosophers
arrived at the infinite and absolute, they seemed to be lost in a region
beyond human comprehension. But Hegel has shown that the absolute and
infinite are no more true than the relative and finite, and that they must
alike be negatived before we arrive at a true absolute or a true infinite.
The conceptions of the infinite and absolute as ordinarily understood are
tiresome because they are unmeaning, but there is no peculiar sanctity or
mystery in them. We might as well make an infinitesimal series of
fractions or a perpetually recurring decimal the object of our worship.
They are the widest and also the thinnest of human ideas, or, in the
language of logicians, they have the greatest extension and the least
comprehension. Of all words they may be truly said to be the most inflated
with a false meaning. They have been handed down from one philosopher to
another until they have acquired a religious character. They seem also to
derive a sacredness from their association with the Divine Being. Yet they
are the poorest of the predicates under which we describe him--signifying
no more than this, that he is not finite, that he is not relative, and
tending to obscure his higher attributes of wisdom, goodness, truth.
The system of Hegel frees the mind from the dominion of abstract ideas. We
acknowledge his originality, and some of us delight to wander in the mazes
of thought which he has opened to us. For Hegel has found admirers in
England and Scotland when his popularity in Germany has departed, and he,
like the philosophers whom he criticizes, is of the past. No other thinker
has ever dissected the human mind with equal patience and minuteness. He
has lightened the burden of thought because he has shown us that the chains
which we wear are of our own forging. To be able to place ourselves not
only above the opinions of men but above their modes of thinking, is a
great height of philosophy. This dearly obtained freedom, however, we are
not disposed to part with, or to allow him to build up in a new form the
'beggarly elements' of scholastic logic which he has thrown down. So far
as they are aids to reflection and expression, forms of thought are useful,
but no further:--we may easily have too many of them.
And when we are asked to believe the Hegelian to be the sole or universal
logic, we naturally reply that there are other ways in which our ideas may
be connected. The triplets of Hegel, the division into being, essence, and
notion, are not the only or necessary modes in which the world of thought
can be conceived. There may be an evolution by degrees as well as by
opposites. The word 'continuity' suggests the possibility of resolving all
differences into differences of quantity. Again, the opposites themselves
may vary from the least degree of diversity up to contradictory opposition.
They are not like numbers and figures, always and everywhere of the same
value. And therefore the edifice which is constructed out of them has
merely an imaginary symmetry, and is really irregular and out of
proportion. The spirit of Hegelian criticism should be applied to his own
system, and the terms Being, Not-being, existence, essence, notion, and the
like challenged and defined. For if Hegel introduces a great many
distinctions, he obliterates a great many others by the help of the
universal solvent 'is not,' which appears to be the simplest of negations,
and yet admits of several meanings. Neither are we able to follow him in
the play of metaphysical fancy which conducts him from one determination of
thought to another. But we begin to suspect that this vast system is not
God within us, or God immanent in the world, and may be only the invention
of an individual brain. The 'beyond' is always coming back upon us however
often we expel it. We do not easily believe that we have within the
compass of the mind the form of universal knowledge. We rather incline to
think that the method of knowledge is inseparable from actual knowledge,
and wait to see what new forms may be developed out of our increasing
experience and observation of man and nature. We are conscious of a Being
who is without us as well as within us. Even if inclined to Pantheism we
are unwilling to imagine that the meagre categories of the understanding,
however ingeniously arranged or displayed, are the image of God;--that what
all religions were seeking after from the beginning was the Hegelian
philosophy which has been revealed in the latter days. The great
metaphysician, like a prophet of old, was naturally inclined to believe
that his own thoughts were divine realities. We may almost say that
whatever came into his head seemed to him to be a necessary truth. He
never appears to have criticized himself, or to have subjected his own
ideas to the process of analysis which he applies to every other
philosopher.
Hegel would have insisted that his philosophy should be accepted as a whole
or not at all. He would have urged that the parts derived their meaning
from one another and from the whole. He thought that he had supplied an
outline large enough to contain all future knowledge, and a method to which
all future philosophies must conform. His metaphysical genius is
especially shown in the construction of the categories--a work which was
only begun by Kant, and elaborated to the utmost by himself. But is it
really true that the part has no meaning when separated from the whole, or
that knowledge to be knowledge at all must be universal? Do all
abstractions shine only by the reflected light of other abstractions? May
they not also find a nearer explanation in their relation to phenomena? If
many of them are correlatives they are not all so, and the relations which
subsist between them vary from a mere association up to a necessary
connexion. Nor is it easy to determine how far the unknown element affects
the known, whether, for example, new discoveries may not one day supersede
our most elementary notions about nature. To a certain extent all our
knowledge is conditional upon what may be known in future ages of the
world. We must admit this hypothetical element, which we cannot get rid of
by an assumption that we have already discovered the method to which all
philosophy must conform. Hegel is right in preferring the concrete to the
abstract, in setting actuality before possibility, in excluding from the
philosopher's vocabulary the word 'inconceivable.' But he is too well
satisfied with his own system ever to consider the effect of what is
unknown on the element which is known. To the Hegelian all things are
plain and clear, while he who is outside the charmed circle is in the mire
of ignorance and 'logical impurity': he who is within is omniscient, or at
least has all the elements of knowledge under his hand.
Hegelianism may be said to be a transcendental defence of the world as it
is. There is no room for aspiration and no need of any: 'What is actual
is rational, what is rational is actual.' But a good man will not readily
acquiesce in this aphorism. He knows of course that all things proceed
according to law whether for good or evil. But when he sees the misery and
ignorance of mankind he is convinced that without any interruption of the
uniformity of nature the condition of the world may be indefinitely
improved by human effort. There is also an adaptation of persons to times
and countries, but this is very far from being the fulfilment of their
higher natures. The man of the seventeenth century is unfitted for the
eighteenth, and the man of the eighteenth for the nineteenth, and most of
us would be out of place in the world of a hundred years hence. But all
higher minds are much more akin than they are different: genius is of all
ages, and there is perhaps more uniformity in excellence than in
mediocrity. The sublimer intelligences of mankind--Plato, Dante, Sir
Thomas More--meet in a higher sphere above the ordinary ways of men; they
understand one another from afar, notwithstanding the interval which
separates them. They are 'the spectators of all time and of all
existence;' their works live for ever; and there is nothing to prevent the
force of their individuality breaking through the uniformity which
surrounds them. But such disturbers of the order of thought Hegel is
reluctant to acknowledge.
The doctrine of Hegel will to many seem the expression of an indolent
conservatism, and will at any rate be made an excuse for it. The mind of
the patriot rebels when he is told that the worst tyranny and oppression
has a natural fitness: he cannot be persuaded, for example, that the
conquest of Prussia by Napoleon I. was either natural or necessary, or that
any similar calamity befalling a nation should be a matter of indifference
to the poet or philosopher. We may need such a philosophy or religion to
console us under evils which are irremediable, but we see that it is fatal
to the higher life of man. It seems to say to us, 'The world is a vast
system or machine which can be conceived under the forms of logic, but in
which no single man can do any great good or any great harm. Even if it
were a thousand times worse than it is, it could be arranged in categories
and explained by philosophers. And what more do we want?'
The philosophy of Hegel appeals to an historical criterion: the ideas of
men have a succession in time as well as an order of thought. But the
assumption that there is a correspondence between the succession of ideas
in history and the natural order of philosophy is hardly true even of the
beginnings of thought. And in later systems forms of thought are too
numerous and complex to admit of our tracing in them a regular succession.
They seem also to be in part reflections of the past, and it is difficult
to separate in them what is original and what is borrowed. Doubtless they
have a relation to one another--the transition from Descartes to Spinoza or
from Locke to Berkeley is not a matter of chance, but it can hardly be
described as an alternation of opposites or figured to the mind by the
vibrations of a pendulum. Even in Aristotle and Plato, rightly understood,
we cannot trace this law of action and reaction. They are both idealists,
although to the one the idea is actual and immanent,--to the other only
potential and transcendent, as Hegel himself has pointed out (Wallace's
Hegel). The true meaning of Aristotle has been disguised from us by his
own appeal to fact and the opinions of mankind in his more popular works,
and by the use made of his writings in the Middle Ages. No book, except
the Scriptures, has been so much read, and so little understood. The Pre-
Socratic philosophies are simpler, and we may observe a progress in them;
but is there any regular succession? The ideas of Being, change, number,
seem to have sprung up contemporaneously in different parts of Greece and
we have no difficulty in constructing them out of one another--we can see
that the union of Being and Not-being gave birth to the idea of change or
Becoming and that one might be another aspect of Being. Again, the
Eleatics may be regarded as developing in one direction into the Megarian
school, in the other into the Atomists, but there is no necessary connexion
between them. Nor is there any indication that the deficiency which was
felt in one school was supplemented or compensated by another. They were
all efforts to supply the want which the Greeks began to feel at the
beginning of the sixth century before Christ,--the want of abstract ideas.
Nor must we forget the uncertainty of chronology;--if, as Aristotle says,
there were Atomists before Leucippus, Eleatics before Xenophanes, and
perhaps 'patrons of the flux' before Heracleitus, Hegel's order of thought
in the history of philosophy would be as much disarranged as his order of
religious thought by recent discoveries in the history of religion.
Hegel is fond of repeating that all philosophies still live and that the
earlier are preserved in the later; they are refuted, and they are not
refuted, by those who succeed them. Once they reigned supreme, now they
are subordinated to a power or idea greater or more comprehensive than
their own. The thoughts of Socrates and Plato and Aristotle have certainly
sunk deep into the mind of the world, and have exercised an influence which
will never pass away; but can we say that they have the same meaning in
modern and ancient philosophy? Some of them, as for example the words
'Being,' 'essence,' 'matter,' 'form,' either have become obsolete, or are
used in new senses, whereas 'individual,' 'cause,' 'motive,' have acquired
an exaggerated importance. Is the manner in which the logical
determinations of thought, or 'categories' as they may be termed, have been
handed down to us, really different from that in which other words have
come down to us? Have they not been equally subject to accident, and are
they not often used by Hegel himself in senses which would have been quite
unintelligible to their original inventors--as for example, when he speaks
of the 'ground' of Leibnitz ('Everything has a sufficient ground') as
identical with his own doctrine of the 'notion' (Wallace's Hegel), or the
'Being and Not-being' of Heracleitus as the same with his own 'Becoming'?
As the historical order of thought has been adapted to the logical, so we
have reason for suspecting that the Hegelian logic has been in some degree
adapted to the order of thought in history. There is unfortunately no
criterion to which either of them can be subjected, and not much forcing
was required to bring either into near relations with the other. We may
fairly doubt whether the division of the first and second parts of logic in
the Hegelian system has not really arisen from a desire to make them accord
with the first and second stages of the early Greek philosophy. Is there
any reason why the conception of measure in the first part, which is formed
by the union of quality and quantity, should not have been equally placed
in the second division of mediate or reflected ideas? The more we analyze
them the less exact does the coincidence of philosophy and the history of
philosophy appear. Many terms which were used absolutely in the beginning
of philosophy, such as 'Being,' 'matter,' 'cause,' and the like, became
relative in the subsequent history of thought. But Hegel employs some of
them absolutely, some relatively, seemingly without any principle and
without any regard to their original significance.
The divisions of the Hegelian logic bear a superficial resemblance to the
divisions of the scholastic logic. The first part answers to the term, the
second to the proposition, the third to the syllogism. These are the
grades of thought under which we conceive the world, first, in the general
terms of quality, quantity, measure; secondly, under the relative forms of
'ground' and existence, substance and accidents, and the like; thirdly in
syllogistic forms of the individual mediated with the universal by the help
of the particular. Of syllogisms there are various kinds,--qualitative,
quantitative, inductive, mechanical, teleological,--which are developed out
of one another. But is there any meaning in reintroducing the forms of the
old logic? Who ever thinks of the world as a syllogism? What connexion is
there between the proposition and our ideas of reciprocity, cause and
effect, and similar relations? It is difficult enough to conceive all the
powers of nature and mind gathered up in one. The difficulty is greatly
increased when the new is confused with the old, and the common logic is
the Procrustes' bed into which they are forced.
The Hegelian philosophy claims, as we have seen, to be based upon
experience: it abrogates the distinction of a priori and a posteriori
truth. It also acknowledges that many differences of kind are resolvable
into differences of degree. It is familiar with the terms 'evolution,'
'development,' and the like. Yet it can hardly be said to have considered
the forms of thought which are best adapted for the expression of facts.
It has never applied the categories to experience; it has not defined the
differences in our ideas of opposition, or development, or cause and
effect, in the different sciences which make use of these terms. It rests
on a knowledge which is not the result of exact or serious enquiry, but is
floating in the air; the mind has been imperceptibly informed of some of
the methods required in the sciences. Hegel boasts that the movement of
dialectic is at once necessary and spontaneous: in reality it goes beyond
experience and is unverified by it. Further, the Hegelian philosophy,
while giving us the power of thinking a great deal more than we are able to
fill up, seems to be wanting in some determinations of thought which we
require. We cannot say that physical science, which at present occupies so
large a share of popular attention, has been made easier or more
intelligible by the distinctions of Hegel. Nor can we deny that he has
sometimes interpreted physics by metaphysics, and confused his own
philosophical fancies with the laws of nature. The very freedom of the
movement is not without suspicion, seeming to imply a state of the human
mind which has entirely lost sight of facts. Nor can the necessity which
is attributed to it be very stringent, seeing that the successive
categories or determinations of thought in different parts of his writings
are arranged by the philosopher in different ways. What is termed
necessary evolution seems to be only the order in which a succession of
ideas presented themselves to the mind of Hegel at a particular time.
The nomenclature of Hegel has been made by himself out of the language of
common life. He uses a few words only which are borrowed from his
predecessors, or from the Greek philosophy, and these generally in a sense
peculiar to himself. The first stage of his philosophy answers to the word
'is,' the second to the word 'has been,' the third to the words 'has been'
and 'is' combined. In other words, the first sphere is immediate, the
second mediated by reflection, the third or highest returns into the first,
and is both mediate and immediate. As Luther's Bible was written in the
language of the common people, so Hegel seems to have thought that he gave
his philosophy a truly German character by the use of idiomatic German
words. But it may be doubted whether the attempt has been successful.
First because such words as 'in sich seyn,' 'an sich seyn,' 'an und fur
sich seyn,' though the simplest combinations of nouns and verbs, require a
difficult and elaborate explanation. The simplicity of the words contrasts
with the hardness of their meaning. Secondly, the use of technical
phraseology necessarily separates philosophy from general literature; the
student has to learn a new language of uncertain meaning which he with
difficulty remembers. No former philosopher had ever carried the use of
technical terms to the same extent as Hegel. The language of Plato or even
of Aristotle is but slightly removed from that of common life, and was
introduced naturally by a series of thinkers: the language of the
scholastic logic has become technical to us, but in the Middle Ages was the
vernacular Latin of priests and students. The higher spirit of philosophy,
the spirit of Plato and Socrates, rebels against the Hegelian use of
language as mechanical and technical.
Hegel is fond of etymologies and often seems to trifle with words. He
gives etymologies which are bad, and never considers that the meaning of a
word may have nothing to do with its derivation. He lived before the days
of Comparative Philology or of Comparative Mythology and Religion, which
would have opened a new world to him. He makes no allowance for the
element of chance either in language or thought; and perhaps there is no
greater defect in his system than the want of a sound theory of language.
He speaks as if thought, instead of being identical with language, was
wholly independent of it. It is not the actual growth of the mind, but the
imaginary growth of the Hegelian system, which is attractive to him.
Neither are we able to say why of the common forms of thought some are
rejected by him, while others have an undue prominence given to them. Some
of them, such as 'ground' and 'existence,' have hardly any basis either in
language or philosophy, while others, such as 'cause' and 'effect,' are but
slightly considered. All abstractions are supposed by Hegel to derive
their meaning from one another. This is true of some, but not of all, and
in different degrees. There is an explanation of abstractions by the
phenomena which they represent, as well as by their relation to other
abstractions. If the knowledge of all were necessary to the knowledge of
any one of them, the mind would sink under the load of thought. Again, in
every process of reflection we seem to require a standing ground, and in
the attempt to obtain a complete analysis we lose all fixedness. If, for
example, the mind is viewed as the complex of ideas, or the difference
between things and persons denied, such an analysis may be justified from
the point of view of Hegel: but we shall find that in the attempt to
criticize thought we have lost the power of thinking, and, like the
Heracliteans of old, have no words in which our meaning can be expressed.
Such an analysis may be of value as a corrective of popular language or
thought, but should still allow us to retain the fundamental distinctions
of philosophy.
In the Hegelian system ideas supersede persons. The world of thought,
though sometimes described as Spirit or 'Geist,' is really impersonal. The
minds of men are to be regarded as one mind, or more correctly as a
succession of ideas. Any comprehensive view of the world must necessarily
be general, and there may be a use with a view to comprehensiveness in
dropping individuals and their lives and actions. In all things, if we
leave out details, a certain degree of order begins to appear; at any rate
we can make an order which, with a little exaggeration or disproportion in
some of the parts, will cover the whole field of philosophy. But are we
therefore justified in saying that ideas are the causes of the great
movement of the world rather than the personalities which conceived them?
The great man is the expression of his time, and there may be peculiar
difficulties in his age which he cannot overcome. He may be out of harmony
with his circumstances, too early or too late, and then all his thoughts
perish; his genius passes away unknown. But not therefore is he to be
regarded as a mere waif or stray in human history, any more than he is the
mere creature or expression of the age in which he lives. His ideas are
inseparable from himself, and would have been nothing without him. Through
a thousand personal influences they have been brought home to the minds of
others. He starts from antecedents, but he is great in proportion as he
disengages himself from them or absorbs himself in them. Moreover the
types of greatness differ; while one man is the expression of the
influences of his age, another is in antagonism to them. One man is borne
on the surface of the water; another is carried forward by the current
which flows beneath. The character of an individual, whether he be
independent of circumstances or not, inspires others quite as much as his
words. What is the teaching of Socrates apart from his personal history,
or the doctrines of Christ apart from the Divine life in which they are
embodied? Has not Hegel himself delineated the greatness of the life of
Christ as consisting in his 'Schicksalslosigkeit' or independence of the
destiny of his race? Do not persons become ideas, and is there any
distinction between them? Take away the five greatest legislators, the
five greatest warriors, the five greatest poets, the five greatest founders
or teachers of a religion, the five greatest philosophers, the five
greatest inventors,--where would have been all that we most value in
knowledge or in life? And can that be a true theory of the history of
philosophy which, in Hegel's own language, 'does not allow the individual
to have his right'?
Once more, while we readily admit that the world is relative to the mind,
and the mind to the world, and that we must suppose a common or correlative
growth in them, we shrink from saying that this complex nature can contain,
even in outline, all the endless forms of Being and knowledge. Are we not
'seeking the living among the dead' and dignifying a mere logical skeleton
with the name of philosophy and almost of God? When we look far away into
the primeval sources of thought and belief, do we suppose that the mere
accident of our being the heirs of the Greek philosophers can give us a
right to set ourselves up as having the true and only standard of reason in
the world? Or when we contemplate the infinite worlds in the expanse of
heaven can we imagine that a few meagre categories derived from language
and invented by the genius of one or two great thinkers contain the secret
of the universe? Or, having regard to the ages during which the human race
may yet endure, do we suppose that we can anticipate the proportions human
knowledge may attain even within the short space of one or two thousand
years?
Again, we have a difficulty in understanding how ideas can be causes, which
to us seems to be as much a figure of speech as the old notion of a creator
artist, 'who makes the world by the help of the demigods' (Plato, Tim.), or
with 'a golden pair of compasses' measures out the circumference of the
universe (Milton, P.L.). We can understand how the idea in the mind of an
inventor is the cause of the work which is produced by it; and we can dimly
imagine how this universal frame may be animated by a divine intelligence.
But we cannot conceive how all the thoughts of men that ever were, which
are themselves subject to so many external conditions of climate, country,
and the like, even if regarded as the single thought of a Divine Being, can
be supposed to have made the world. We appear to be only wrapping up
ourselves in our own conceits--to be confusing cause and effect--to be
losing the distinction between reflection and action, between the human and
divine.
These are some of the doubts and suspicions which arise in the mind of a
student of Hegel, when, after living for a time within the charmed circle,
he removes to a little distance and looks back upon what he has learnt,
from the vantage-ground of history and experience. The enthusiasm of his
youth has passed away, the authority of the master no longer retains a hold
upon him. But he does not regret the time spent in the study of him. He
finds that he has received from him a real enlargement of mind, and much of
the true spirit of philosophy, even when he has ceased to believe in him.
He returns again and again to his writings as to the recollections of a
first love, not undeserving of his admiration still. Perhaps if he were
asked how he can admire without believing, or what value he can attribute
to what he knows to be erroneous, he might answer in some such manner as
the following:--
1. That in Hegel he finds glimpses of the genius of the poet and of the
common sense of the man of the world. His system is not cast in a poetic
form, but neither has all this load of logic extinguished in him the
feeling of poetry. He is the true countryman of his contemporaries Goethe
and Schiller. Many fine expressions are scattered up and down in his
writings, as when he tells us that 'the Crusaders went to the Sepulchre but
found it empty.' He delights to find vestiges of his own philosophy in the
older German mystics. And though he can be scarcely said to have mixed
much in the affairs of men, for, as his biographer tells us, 'he lived for
thirty years in a single room,' yet he is far from being ignorant of the
world. No one can read his writings without acquiring an insight into
life. He loves to touch with the spear of logic the follies and self-
deceptions of mankind, and make them appear in their natural form, stripped
of the disguises of language and custom. He will not allow men to defend
themselves by an appeal to one-sided or abstract principles. In this age
of reason any one can too easily find a reason for doing what he likes
(Wallace). He is suspicious of a distinction which is often made between a
person's character and his conduct. His spirit is the opposite of that of
Jesuitism or casuistry (Wallace). He affords an example of a remark which
has been often made, that in order to know the world it is not necessary to
have had a great experience of it.
2. Hegel, if not the greatest philosopher, is certainly the greatest
critic of philosophy who ever lived. No one else has equally mastered the
opinions of his predecessors or traced the connexion of them in the same
manner. No one has equally raised the human mind above the trivialities of
the common logic and the unmeaningness of 'mere' abstractions, and above
imaginary possibilities, which, as he truly says, have no place in
philosophy. No one has won so much for the kingdom of ideas. Whatever may
be thought of his own system it will hardly be denied that he has
overthrown Locke, Kant, Hume, and the so-called philosophy of common sense.
He shows us that only by the study of metaphysics can we get rid of
metaphysics, and that those who are in theory most opposed to them are in
fact most entirely and hopelessly enslaved by them: 'Die reinen Physiker
sind nur die Thiere.' The disciple of Hegel will hardly become the slave
of any other system-maker. What Bacon seems to promise him he will find
realized in the great German thinker, an emancipation nearly complete from
the influences of the scholastic logic.
3. Many of those who are least disposed to become the votaries of
Hegelianism nevertheless recognize in his system a new logic supplying a
variety of instruments and methods hitherto unemployed. We may not be able
to agree with him in assimilating the natural order of human thought with
the history of philosophy, and still less in identifying both with the
divine idea or nature. But we may acknowledge that the great thinker has
thrown a light on many parts of human knowledge, and has solved many
difficulties. We cannot receive his doctrine of opposites as the last word
of philosophy, but still we may regard it as a very important contribution
to logic. We cannot affirm that words have no meaning when taken out of
their connexion in the history of thought. But we recognize that their
meaning is to a great extent due to association, and to their correlation
with one another. We see the advantage of viewing in the concrete what
mankind regard only in the abstract. There is much to be said for his
faith or conviction, that God is immanent in the world,--within the sphere
of the human mind, and not beyond it. It was natural that he himself, like
a prophet of old, should regard the philosophy which he had invented as the
voice of God in man. But this by no means implies that he conceived
himself as creating God in thought. He was the servant of his own ideas
and not the master of them. The philosophy of history and the history of
philosophy may be almost said to have been discovered by him. He has done
more to explain Greek thought than all other writers put together. Many
ideas of development, evolution, reciprocity, which have become the symbols
of another school of thinkers may be traced to his speculations. In the
theology and philosophy of England as well as of Germany, and also in the
lighter literature of both countries, there are always appearing 'fragments
of the great banquet' of Hegel.
SOPHIST
by
Plato
Translated by Benjamin Jowett
PERSONS OF THE DIALOGUE:
Theodorus, Theaetetus, Socrates.
An Eleatic Stranger, whom Theodorus and Theaetetus bring with them.
The younger Socrates, who is a silent auditor.
THEODORUS: Here we are, Socrates, true to our agreement of yesterday; and
we bring with us a stranger from Elea, who is a disciple of Parmenides and
Zeno, and a true philosopher.
SOCRATES: Is he not rather a god, Theodorus, who comes to us in the
disguise of a stranger? For Homer says that all the gods, and especially
the god of strangers, are companions of the meek and just, and visit the
good and evil among men. And may not your companion be one of those higher
powers, a cross-examining deity, who has come to spy out our weakness in
argument, and to cross-examine us?
THEODORUS: Nay, Socrates, he is not one of the disputatious sort--he is
too good for that. And, in my opinion, he is not a god at all; but divine
he certainly is, for this is a title which I should give to all
philosophers.
SOCRATES: Capital, my friend! and I may add that they are almost as hard
to be discerned as the gods. For the true philosophers, and such as are
not merely made up for the occasion, appear in various forms unrecognized
by the ignorance of men, and they 'hover about cities,' as Homer declares,
looking from above upon human life; and some think nothing of them, and
others can never think enough; and sometimes they appear as statesmen, and
sometimes as sophists; and then, again, to many they seem to be no better
than madmen. I should like to ask our Eleatic friend, if he would tell us,
what is thought about them in Italy, and to whom the terms are applied.
THEODORUS: What terms?
SOCRATES: Sophist, statesman, philosopher.
THEODORUS: What is your difficulty about them, and what made you ask?
SOCRATES: I want to know whether by his countrymen they are regarded as
one or two; or do they, as the names are three, distinguish also three
kinds, and assign one to each name?
THEODORUS: I dare say that the Stranger will not object to discuss the
question. What do you say, Stranger?
STRANGER: I am far from objecting, Theodorus, nor have I any difficulty in
replying that by us they are regarded as three. But to define precisely
the nature of each of them is by no means a slight or easy task.
THEODORUS: You have happened to light, Socrates, almost on the very
question which we were asking our friend before we came hither, and he
excused himself to us, as he does now to you; although he admitted that the
matter had been fully discussed, and that he remembered the answer.
SOCRATES: Then do not, Stranger, deny us the first favour which we ask of
you: I am sure that you will not, and therefore I shall only beg of you to
say whether you like and are accustomed to make a long oration on a subject
which you want to explain to another, or to proceed by the method of
question and answer. I remember hearing a very noble discussion in which
Parmenides employed the latter of the two methods, when I was a young man,
and he was far advanced in years. (Compare Parm.)
STRANGER: I prefer to talk with another when he responds pleasantly, and
is light in hand; if not, I would rather have my own say.
SOCRATES: Any one of the present company will respond kindly to you, and
you can choose whom you like of them; I should recommend you to take a
young person--Theaetetus, for example--unless you have a preference for
some one else.
STRANGER: I feel ashamed, Socrates, being a new-comer into your society,
instead of talking a little and hearing others talk, to be spinning out a
long soliloquy or address, as if I wanted to show off. For the true answer
will certainly be a very long one, a great deal longer than might be
expected from such a short and simple question. At the same time, I fear
that I may seem rude and ungracious if I refuse your courteous request,
especially after what you have said. For I certainly cannot object to your
proposal, that Theaetetus should respond, having already conversed with him
myself, and being recommended by you to take him.
THEAETETUS: But are you sure, Stranger, that this will be quite so
acceptable to the rest of the company as Socrates imagines?
STRANGER: You hear them applauding, Theaetetus; after that, there is
nothing more to be said. Well then, I am to argue with you, and if you
tire of the argument, you may complain of your friends and not of me.
THEAETETUS: I do not think that I shall tire, and if I do, I shall get my
friend here, young Socrates, the namesake of the elder Socrates, to help;
he is about my own age, and my partner at the gymnasium, and is constantly
accustomed to work with me.
STRANGER: Very good; you can decide about that for yourself as we proceed.
Meanwhile you and I will begin together and enquire into the nature of the
Sophist, first of the three: I should like you to make out what he is and
bring him to light in a discussion; for at present we are only agreed about
the name, but of the thing to which we both apply the name possibly you
have one notion and I another; whereas we ought always to come to an
understanding about the thing itself in terms of a definition, and not
merely about the name minus the definition. Now the tribe of Sophists
which we are investigating is not easily caught or defined; and the world
has long ago agreed, that if great subjects are to be adequately treated,
they must be studied in the lesser and easier instances of them before we
proceed to the greatest of all. And as I know that the tribe of Sophists
is troublesome and hard to be caught, I should recommend that we practise
beforehand the method which is to be applied to him on some simple and
smaller thing, unless you can suggest a better way.
THEAETETUS: Indeed I cannot.
STRANGER: Then suppose that we work out some lesser example which will be
a pattern of the greater?
THEAETETUS: Good.
STRANGER: What is there which is well known and not great, and is yet as
susceptible of definition as any larger thing? Shall I say an angler? He
is familiar to all of us, and not a very interesting or important person.
THEAETETUS: He is not.
STRANGER: Yet I suspect that he will furnish us with the sort of
definition and line of enquiry which we want.
THEAETETUS: Very good.
STRANGER: Let us begin by asking whether he is a man having art or not
having art, but some other power.
THEAETETUS: He is clearly a man of art.
STRANGER: And of arts there are two kinds?
THEAETETUS: What are they?
STRANGER: There is agriculture, and the tending of mortal creatures, and
the art of constructing or moulding vessels, and there is the art of
imitation--all these may be appropriately called by a single name.
THEAETETUS: What do you mean? And what is the name?
STRANGER: He who brings into existence something that did not exist before
is said to be a producer, and that which is brought into existence is said
to be produced.
THEAETETUS: True.
STRANGER: And all the arts which were just now mentioned are characterized
by this power of producing?
THEAETETUS: They are.
STRANGER: Then let us sum them up under the name of productive or creative
art.
THEAETETUS: Very good.
STRANGER: Next follows the whole class of learning and cognition; then
comes trade, fighting, hunting. And since none of these produces anything,
but is only engaged in conquering by word or deed, or in preventing others
from conquering, things which exist and have been already produced--in each
and all of these branches there appears to be an art which may be called
acquisitive.
THEAETETUS: Yes, that is the proper name.
STRANGER: Seeing, then, that all arts are either acquisitive or creative,
in which class shall we place the art of the angler?
THEAETETUS: Clearly in the acquisitive class.
STRANGER: And the acquisitive may be subdivided into two parts: there is
exchange, which is voluntary and is effected by gifts, hire, purchase; and
the other part of acquisitive, which takes by force of word or deed, may be
termed conquest?
THEAETETUS: That is implied in what has been said.
STRANGER: And may not conquest be again subdivided?
THEAETETUS: How?
STRANGER: Open force may be called fighting, and secret force may have the
general name of hunting?
THEAETETUS: Yes.
STRANGER: And there is no reason why the art of hunting should not be
further divided.
THEAETETUS: How would you make the division?
STRANGER: Into the hunting of living and of lifeless prey.
THEAETETUS: Yes, if both kinds exist.
STRANGER: Of course they exist; but the hunting after lifeless things
having no special name, except some sorts of diving, and other small
matters, may be omitted; the hunting after living things may be called
animal hunting.
THEAETETUS: Yes.
STRANGER: And animal hunting may be truly said to have two divisions,
land-animal hunting, which has many kinds and names, and water-animal
hunting, or the hunting after animals who swim?
THEAETETUS: True.
STRANGER: And of swimming animals, one class lives on the wing and the
other in the water?
THEAETETUS: Certainly.
STRANGER: Fowling is the general term under which the hunting of all birds
is included.
THEAETETUS: True.
STRANGER: The hunting of animals who live in the water has the general
name of fishing.
THEAETETUS: Yes.
STRANGER: And this sort of hunting may be further divided also into two
principal kinds?
THEAETETUS: What are they?
STRANGER: There is one kind which takes them in nets, another which takes
them by a blow.
THEAETETUS: What do you mean, and how do you distinguish them?
STRANGER: As to the first kind--all that surrounds and encloses anything
to prevent egress, may be rightly called an enclosure.
THEAETETUS: Very true.
STRANGER: For which reason twig baskets, casting-nets, nooses, creels, and
the like may all be termed 'enclosures'?
THEAETETUS: True.
STRANGER: And therefore this first kind of capture may be called by us
capture with enclosures, or something of that sort?
THEAETETUS: Yes.
STRANGER: The other kind, which is practised by a blow with hooks and
three-pronged spears, when summed up under one name, may be called
striking, unless you, Theaetetus, can find some better name?
THEAETETUS: Never mind the name--what you suggest will do very well.
STRANGER: There is one mode of striking, which is done at night, and by
the light of a fire, and is by the hunters themselves called firing, or
spearing by firelight.
THEAETETUS: True.
STRANGER: And the fishing by day is called by the general name of barbing,
because the spears, too, are barbed at the point.
THEAETETUS: Yes, that is the term.
STRANGER: Of this barb-fishing, that which strikes the fish who is below
from above is called spearing, because this is the way in which the three-
pronged spears are mostly used.
THEAETETUS: Yes, it is often called so.
STRANGER: Then now there is only one kind remaining.
THEAETETUS: What is that?
STRANGER: When a hook is used, and the fish is not struck in any chance
part of his body, as he is with the spear, but only about the head and
mouth, and is then drawn out from below upwards with reeds and rods:--What
is the right name of that mode of fishing, Theaetetus?
THEAETETUS: I suspect that we have now discovered the object of our
search.
STRANGER: Then now you and I have come to an understanding not only about
the name of the angler's art, but about the definition of the thing itself.
One half of all art was acquisitive--half of the acquisitive art was
conquest or taking by force, half of this was hunting, and half of hunting
was hunting animals, half of this was hunting water animals--of this again,
the under half was fishing, half of fishing was striking; a part of
striking was fishing with a barb, and one half of this again, being the
kind which strikes with a hook and draws the fish from below upwards, is
the art which we have been seeking, and which from the nature of the
operation is denoted angling or drawing up (aspalieutike, anaspasthai).
THEAETETUS: The result has been quite satisfactorily brought out.
STRANGER: And now, following this pattern, let us endeavour to find out
what a Sophist is.
THEAETETUS: By all means.
STRANGER: The first question about the angler was, whether he was a
skilled artist or unskilled?
THEAETETUS: True.
STRANGER: And shall we call our new friend unskilled, or a thorough master
of his craft?
THEAETETUS: Certainly not unskilled, for his name, as, indeed, you imply,
must surely express his nature.
STRANGER: Then he must be supposed to have some art.
THEAETETUS: What art?
STRANGER: By heaven, they are cousins! it never occurred to us.
THEAETETUS: Who are cousins?
STRANGER: The angler and the Sophist.
THEAETETUS: In what way are they related?
STRANGER: They both appear to me to be hunters.
THEAETETUS: How the Sophist? Of the other we have spoken.
STRANGER: You remember our division of hunting, into hunting after
swimming animals and land animals?
THEAETETUS: Yes.
STRANGER: And you remember that we subdivided the swimming and left the
land animals, saying that there were many kinds of them?
THEAETETUS: Certainly.
STRANGER: Thus far, then, the Sophist and the angler, starting from the
art of acquiring, take the same road?
THEAETETUS: So it would appear.
STRANGER: Their paths diverge when they reach the art of animal hunting;
the one going to the sea-shore, and to the rivers and to the lakes, and
angling for the animals which are in them.
THEAETETUS: Very true.
STRANGER: While the other goes to land and water of another sort--rivers
of wealth and broad meadow-lands of generous youth; and he also is
intending to take the animals which are in them.
THEAETETUS: What do you mean?
STRANGER: Of hunting on land there are two principal divisions.
THEAETETUS: What are they?
STRANGER: One is the hunting of tame, and the other of wild animals.
THEAETETUS: But are tame animals ever hunted?
STRANGER: Yes, if you include man under tame animals. But if you like you
may say that there are no tame animals, or that, if there are, man is not
among them; or you may say that man is a tame animal but is not hunted--you
shall decide which of these alternatives you prefer.
THEAETETUS: I should say, Stranger, that man is a tame animal, and I admit
that he is hunted.
STRANGER: Then let us divide the hunting of tame animals into two parts.
THEAETETUS: How shall we make the division?
STRANGER: Let us define piracy, man-stealing, tyranny, the whole military
art, by one name, as hunting with violence.
THEAETETUS: Very good.
STRANGER: But the art of the lawyer, of the popular orator, and the art of
conversation may be called in one word the art of persuasion.
THEAETETUS: True.
STRANGER: And of persuasion, there may be said to be two kinds?
THEAETETUS: What are they?
STRANGER: One is private, and the other public.
THEAETETUS: Yes; each of them forms a class.
STRANGER: And of private hunting, one sort receives hire, and the other
brings gifts.
THEAETETUS: I do not understand you.
STRANGER: You seem never to have observed the manner in which lovers hunt.
THEAETETUS: To what do you refer?
STRANGER: I mean that they lavish gifts on those whom they hunt in
addition to other inducements.
THEAETETUS: Most true.
STRANGER: Let us admit this, then, to be the amatory art.
THEAETETUS: Certainly.
STRANGER: But that sort of hireling whose conversation is pleasing and who
baits his hook only with pleasure and exacts nothing but his maintenance in
return, we should all, if I am not mistaken, describe as possessing
flattery or an art of making things pleasant.
THEAETETUS: Certainly.
STRANGER: And that sort, which professes to form acquaintances only for
the sake of virtue, and demands a reward in the shape of money, may be
fairly called by another name?
THEAETETUS: To be sure.
STRANGER: And what is the name? Will you tell me?
THEAETETUS: It is obvious enough; for I believe that we have discovered
the Sophist: which is, as I conceive, the proper name for the class
described.
STRANGER: Then now, Theaetetus, his art may be traced as a branch of the
appropriative, acquisitive family--which hunts animals,--living--land--tame
animals; which hunts man,--privately--for hire,--taking money in exchange--
having the semblance of education; and this is termed Sophistry, and is a
hunt after young men of wealth and rank--such is the conclusion.
THEAETETUS: Just so.
STRANGER: Let us take another branch of his genealogy; for he is a
professor of a great and many-sided art; and if we look back at what has
preceded we see that he presents another aspect, besides that of which we
are speaking.
THEAETETUS: In what respect?
STRANGER: There were two sorts of acquisitive art; the one concerned with
hunting, the other with exchange.
THEAETETUS: There were.
STRANGER: And of the art of exchange there are two divisions, the one of
giving, and the other of selling.
THEAETETUS: Let us assume that.
STRANGER: Next, we will suppose the art of selling to be divided into two
parts.
THEAETETUS: How?
STRANGER: There is one part which is distinguished as the sale of a man's
own productions; another, which is the exchange of the works of others.
THEAETETUS: Certainly.
STRANGER: And is not that part of exchange which takes place in the city,
being about half of the whole, termed retailing?
THEAETETUS: Yes.
STRANGER: And that which exchanges the goods of one city for those of
another by selling and buying is the exchange of the merchant?
THEAETETUS: To be sure.
STRANGER: And you are aware that this exchange of the merchant is of two
kinds: it is partly concerned with food for the use of the body, and
partly with the food of the soul which is bartered and received in exchange
for money.
THEAETETUS: What do you mean?
STRANGER: You want to know what is the meaning of food for the soul; the
other kind you surely understand.
THEAETETUS: Yes.
STRANGER: Take music in general and painting and marionette playing and
many other things, which are purchased in one city, and carried away and
sold in another--wares of the soul which are hawked about either for the
sake of instruction or amusement;--may not he who takes them about and
sells them be quite as truly called a merchant as he who sells meats and
drinks?
THEAETETUS: To be sure he may.
STRANGER: And would you not call by the same name him who buys up
knowledge and goes about from city to city exchanging his wares for money?
THEAETETUS: Certainly I should.
STRANGER: Of this merchandise of the soul, may not one part be fairly
termed the art of display? And there is another part which is certainly
not less ridiculous, but being a trade in learning must be called by some
name germane to the matter?
THEAETETUS: Certainly.
STRANGER: The latter should have two names,--one descriptive of the sale
of the knowledge of virtue, and the other of the sale of other kinds of
knowledge.
THEAETETUS: Of course.
STRANGER: The name of art-seller corresponds well enough to the latter;
but you must try and tell me the name of the other.
THEAETETUS: He must be the Sophist, whom we are seeking; no other name can
possibly be right.
STRANGER: No other; and so this trader in virtue again turns out to be our
friend the Sophist, whose art may now be traced from the art of acquisition
through exchange, trade, merchandise, to a merchandise of the soul which is
concerned with speech and the knowledge of virtue.
THEAETETUS: Quite true.
STRANGER: And there may be a third reappearance of him;--for he may have
settled down in a city, and may fabricate as well as buy these same wares,
intending to live by selling them, and he would still be called a Sophist?
THEAETETUS: Certainly.
STRANGER: Then that part of the acquisitive art which exchanges, and of
exchange which either sells a man's own productions or retails those of
others, as the case may be, and in either way sells the knowledge of
virtue, you would again term Sophistry?
THEAETETUS: I must, if I am to keep pace with the argument.
STRANGER: Let us consider once more whether there may not be yet another
aspect of sophistry.
THEAETETUS: What is it?
STRANGER: In the acquisitive there was a subdivision of the combative or
fighting art.
THEAETETUS: There was.
STRANGER: Perhaps we had better divide it.
THEAETETUS: What shall be the divisions?
STRANGER: There shall be one division of the competitive, and another of
the pugnacious.
THEAETETUS: Very good.
STRANGER: That part of the pugnacious which is a contest of bodily
strength may be properly called by some such name as violent.
THEAETETUS: True.
STRANGER: And when the war is one of words, it may be termed controversy?
THEAETETUS: Yes.
STRANGER: And controversy may be of two kinds.
THEAETETUS: What are they?
STRANGER: When long speeches are answered by long speeches, and there is
public discussion about the just and unjust, that is forensic controversy.
THEAETETUS: Yes.
STRANGER: And there is a private sort of controversy, which is cut up into
questions and answers, and this is commonly called disputation?
THEAETETUS: Yes, that is the name.
STRANGER: And of disputation, that sort which is only a discussion about
contracts, and is carried on at random, and without rules of art, is
recognized by the reasoning faculty to be a distinct class, but has
hitherto had no distinctive name, and does not deserve to receive one from
us.
THEAETETUS: No; for the different sorts of it are too minute and
heterogeneous.
STRANGER: But that which proceeds by rules of art to dispute about justice
and injustice in their own nature, and about things in general, we have
been accustomed to call argumentation (Eristic)?
THEAETETUS: Certainly.
STRANGER: And of argumentation, one sort wastes money, and the other makes
money.
THEAETETUS: Very true.
STRANGER: Suppose we try and give to each of these two classes a name.
THEAETETUS: Let us do so.
STRANGER: I should say that the habit which leads a man to neglect his own
affairs for the pleasure of conversation, of which the style is far from
being agreeable to the majority of his hearers, may be fairly termed
loquacity: such is my opinion.
THEAETETUS: That is the common name for it.
STRANGER: But now who the other is, who makes money out of private
disputation, it is your turn to say.
THEAETETUS: There is only one true answer: he is the wonderful Sophist,
of whom we are in pursuit, and who reappears again for the fourth time.
STRANGER: Yes, and with a fresh pedigree, for he is the money-making
species of the Eristic, disputatious, controversial, pugnacious, combative,
acquisitive family, as the argument has already proven.
THEAETETUS: Certainly.
STRANGER: How true was the observation that he was a many-sided animal,
and not to be caught with one hand, as they say!
THEAETETUS: Then you must catch him with two.
STRANGER: Yes, we must, if we can. And therefore let us try another track
in our pursuit of him: You are aware that there are certain menial
occupations which have names among servants?
THEAETETUS: Yes, there are many such; which of them do you mean?
STRANGER: I mean such as sifting, straining, winnowing, threshing.
THEAETETUS: Certainly.
STRANGER: And besides these there are a great many more, such as carding,
spinning, adjusting the warp and the woof; and thousands of similar
expressions are used in the arts.
THEAETETUS: Of what are they to be patterns, and what are we going to do
with them all?
STRANGER: I think that in all of these there is implied a notion of
division.
THEAETETUS: Yes.
STRANGER: Then if, as I was saying, there is one art which includes all of
them, ought not that art to have one name?
THEAETETUS: And what is the name of the art?
STRANGER: The art of discerning or discriminating.
THEAETETUS: Very good.
STRANGER: Think whether you cannot divide this.
THEAETETUS: I should have to think a long while.
STRANGER: In all the previously named processes either like has been
separated from like or the better from the worse.
THEAETETUS: I see now what you mean.
STRANGER: There is no name for the first kind of separation; of the
second, which throws away the worse and preserves the better, I do know a
name.
THEAETETUS: What is it?
STRANGER: Every discernment or discrimination of that kind, as I have
observed, is called a purification.
THEAETETUS: Yes, that is the usual expression.
STRANGER: And any one may see that purification is of two kinds.
THEAETETUS: Perhaps so, if he were allowed time to think; but I do not see
at this moment.
STRANGER: There are many purifications of bodies which may with propriety
be comprehended under a single name.
THEAETETUS: What are they, and what is their name?
STRANGER: There is the purification of living bodies in their inward and
in their outward parts, of which the former is duly effected by medicine
and gymnastic, the latter by the not very dignified art of the bath-man;
and there is the purification of inanimate substances--to this the arts of
fulling and of furbishing in general attend in a number of minute
particulars, having a variety of names which are thought ridiculous.
THEAETETUS: Very true.
STRANGER: There can be no doubt that they are thought ridiculous,
Theaetetus; but then the dialectical art never considers whether the
benefit to be derived from the purge is greater or less than that to be
derived from the sponge, and has not more interest in the one than in the
other; her endeavour is to know what is and is not kindred in all arts,
with a view to the acquisition of intelligence; and having this in view,
she honours them all alike, and when she makes comparisons, she counts one
of them not a whit more ridiculous than another; nor does she esteem him
who adduces as his example of hunting, the general's art, at all more
decorous than another who cites that of the vermin-destroyer, but only as
the greater pretender of the two. And as to your question concerning the
name which was to comprehend all these arts of purification, whether of
animate or inanimate bodies, the art of dialectic is in no wise particular
about fine words, if she may be only allowed to have a general name for all
other purifications, binding them up together and separating them off from
the purification of the soul or intellect. For this is the purification at
which she wants to arrive, and this we should understand to be her aim.
THEAETETUS: Yes, I understand; and I agree that there are two sorts of
purification, and that one of them is concerned with the soul, and that
there is another which is concerned with the body.
STRANGER: Excellent; and now listen to what I am going to say, and try to
divide further the first of the two.
THEAETETUS: Whatever line of division you suggest, I will endeavour to
assist you.
STRANGER: Do we admit that virtue is distinct from vice in the soul?
THEAETETUS: Certainly.
STRANGER: And purification was to leave the good and to cast out whatever
is bad?
THEAETETUS: True.
STRANGER: Then any taking away of evil from the soul may be properly
called purification?
THEAETETUS: Yes.
STRANGER: And in the soul there are two kinds of evil.
THEAETETUS: What are they?
STRANGER: The one may be compared to disease in the body, the other to
deformity.
THEAETETUS: I do not understand.
STRANGER: Perhaps you have never reflected that disease and discord are
the same.
THEAETETUS: To this, again, I know not what I should reply.
STRANGER: Do you not conceive discord to be a dissolution of kindred
elements, originating in some disagreement?
THEAETETUS: Just that.
STRANGER: And is deformity anything but the want of measure, which is
always unsightly?
THEAETETUS: Exactly.
STRANGER: And do we not see that opinion is opposed to desire, pleasure to
anger, reason to pain, and that all these elements are opposed to one
another in the souls of bad men?
THEAETETUS: Certainly.
STRANGER: And yet they must all be akin?
THEAETETUS: Of course.
STRANGER: Then we shall be right in calling vice a discord and disease of
the soul?
THEAETETUS: Most true.
STRANGER: And when things having motion, and aiming at an appointed mark,
continually miss their aim and glance aside, shall we say that this is the
effect of symmetry among them, or of the want of symmetry?
THEAETETUS: Clearly of the want of symmetry.
STRANGER: But surely we know that no soul is voluntarily ignorant of
anything?
THEAETETUS: Certainly not.
STRANGER: And what is ignorance but the aberration of a mind which is bent
on truth, and in which the process of understanding is perverted?
THEAETETUS: True.
STRANGER: Then we are to regard an unintelligent soul as deformed and
devoid of symmetry?
THEAETETUS: Very true.
STRANGER: Then there are these two kinds of evil in the soul--the one
which is generally called vice, and is obviously a disease of the soul...
THEAETETUS: Yes.
STRANGER: And there is the other, which they call ignorance, and which,
because existing only in the soul, they will not allow to be vice.
THEAETETUS: I certainly admit what I at first disputed--that there are two
kinds of vice in the soul, and that we ought to consider cowardice,
intemperance, and injustice to be alike forms of disease in the soul, and
ignorance, of which there are all sorts of varieties, to be deformity.
STRANGER: And in the case of the body are there not two arts which have to
do with the two bodily states?
THEAETETUS: What are they?
STRANGER: There is gymnastic, which has to do with deformity, and
medicine, which has to do with disease.
THEAETETUS: True.
STRANGER: And where there is insolence and injustice and cowardice, is not
chastisement the art which is most required?
THEAETETUS: That certainly appears to be the opinion of mankind.
STRANGER: Again, of the various kinds of ignorance, may not instruction be
rightly said to be the remedy?
THEAETETUS: True.
STRANGER: And of the art of instruction, shall we say that there is one or
many kinds? At any rate there are two principal ones. Think.
THEAETETUS: I will.
STRANGER: I believe that I can see how we shall soonest arrive at the
answer to this question.
THEAETETUS: How?
STRANGER: If we can discover a line which divides ignorance into two
halves. For a division of ignorance into two parts will certainly imply
that the art of instruction is also twofold, answering to the two divisions
of ignorance.
THEAETETUS: Well, and do you see what you are looking for?
STRANGER: I do seem to myself to see one very large and bad sort of
ignorance which is quite separate, and may be weighed in the scale against
all other sorts of ignorance put together.
THEAETETUS: What is it?
STRANGER: When a person supposes that he knows, and does not know; this
appears to be the great source of all the errors of the intellect.
THEAETETUS: True.
STRANGER: And this, if I am not mistaken, is the kind of ignorance which
specially earns the title of stupidity.
THEAETETUS: True.
STRANGER: What name, then, shall be given to the sort of instruction which
gets rid of this?
THEAETETUS: The instruction which you mean, Stranger, is, I should
imagine, not the teaching of handicraft arts, but what, thanks to us, has
been termed education in this part the world.
STRANGER: Yes, Theaetetus, and by nearly all Hellenes. But we have still
to consider whether education admits of any further division.
THEAETETUS: We have.
STRANGER: I think that there is a point at which such a division is
possible.
THEAETETUS: Where?
STRANGER: Of education, one method appears to be rougher, and another
smoother.
THEAETETUS: How are we to distinguish the two?
STRANGER: There is the time-honoured mode which our fathers commonly
practised towards their sons, and which is still adopted by many--either of
roughly reproving their errors, or of gently advising them; which varieties
may be correctly included under the general term of admonition.
THEAETETUS: True.
STRANGER: But whereas some appear to have arrived at the conclusion that
all ignorance is involuntary, and that no one who thinks himself wise is
willing to learn any of those things in which he is conscious of his own
cleverness, and that the admonitory sort of instruction gives much trouble
and does little good--
THEAETETUS: There they are quite right.
STRANGER: Accordingly, they set to work to eradicate the spirit of conceit
in another way.
THEAETETUS: In what way?
STRANGER: They cross-examine a man's words, when he thinks that he is
saying something and is really saying nothing, and easily convict him of
inconsistencies in his opinions; these they then collect by the dialectical
process, and placing them side by side, show that they contradict one
another about the same things, in relation to the same things, and in the
same respect. He, seeing this, is angry with himself, and grows gentle
towards others, and thus is entirely delivered from great prejudices and
harsh notions, in a way which is most amusing to the hearer, and produces
the most lasting good effect on the person who is the subject of the
operation. For as the physician considers that the body will receive no
benefit from taking food until the internal obstacles have been removed, so
the purifier of the soul is conscious that his patient will receive no
benefit from the application of knowledge until he is refuted, and from
refutation learns modesty; he must be purged of his prejudices first and
made to think that he knows only what he knows, and no more.
THEAETETUS: That is certainly the best and wisest state of mind.
STRANGER: For all these reasons, Theaetetus, we must admit that refutation
is the greatest and chiefest of purifications, and he who has not been
refuted, though he be the Great King himself, is in an awful state of
impurity; he is uninstructed and deformed in those things in which he who
would be truly blessed ought to be fairest and purest.
THEAETETUS: Very true.
STRANGER: And who are the ministers of this art? I am afraid to say the
Sophists.
THEAETETUS: Why?
STRANGER: Lest we should assign to them too high a prerogative.
THEAETETUS: Yet the Sophist has a certain likeness to our minister of
purification.
STRANGER: Yes, the same sort of likeness which a wolf, who is the fiercest
of animals, has to a dog, who is the gentlest. But he who would not be
found tripping, ought to be very careful in this matter of comparisons, for
they are most slippery things. Nevertheless, let us assume that the
Sophists are the men. I say this provisionally, for I think that the line
which divides them will be marked enough if proper care is taken.
THEAETETUS: Likely enough.
STRANGER: Let us grant, then, that from the discerning art comes
purification, and from purification let there be separated off a part which
is concerned with the soul; of this mental purification instruction is a
portion, and of instruction education, and of education, that refutation of
vain conceit which has been discovered in the present argument; and let
this be called by you and me the nobly-descended art of Sophistry.
THEAETETUS: Very well; and yet, considering the number of forms in which
he has presented himself, I begin to doubt how I can with any truth or
confidence describe the real nature of the Sophist.
STRANGER: You naturally feel perplexed; and yet I think that he must be
still more perplexed in his attempt to escape us, for as the proverb says,
when every way is blocked, there is no escape; now, then, is the time of
all others to set upon him.
THEAETETUS: True.
STRANGER: First let us wait a moment and recover breath, and while we are
resting, we may reckon up in how many forms he has appeared. In the first
place, he was discovered to be a paid hunter after wealth and youth.
THEAETETUS: Yes.
STRANGER: In the second place, he was a merchant in the goods of the soul.
THEAETETUS: Certainly.
STRANGER: In the third place, he has turned out to be a retailer of the
same sort of wares.
THEAETETUS: Yes; and in the fourth place, he himself manufactured the
learned wares which he sold.
STRANGER: Quite right; I will try and remember the fifth myself. He
belonged to the fighting class, and was further distinguished as a hero of
debate, who professed the eristic art.
THEAETETUS: True.
STRANGER: The sixth point was doubtful, and yet we at last agreed that he
was a purger of souls, who cleared away notions obstructive to knowledge.
THEAETETUS: Very true.
STRANGER: Do you not see that when the professor of any art has one name
and many kinds of knowledge, there must be something wrong? The
multiplicity of names which is applied to him shows that the common
principle to which all these branches of knowledge are tending, is not
understood.
THEAETETUS: I should imagine this to be the case.
STRANGER: At any rate we will understand him, and no indolence shall
prevent us. Let us begin again, then, and re-examine some of our
statements concerning the Sophist; there was one thing which appeared to me
especially characteristic of him.
THEAETETUS: To what are you referring?
STRANGER: We were saying of him, if I am not mistaken, that he was a
disputer?
THEAETETUS: We were.
STRANGER: And does he not also teach others the art of disputation?
THEAETETUS: Certainly he does.
STRANGER: And about what does he profess that he teaches men to dispute?
To begin at the beginning--Does he make them able to dispute about divine
things, which are invisible to men in general?
THEAETETUS: At any rate, he is said to do so.
STRANGER: And what do you say of the visible things in heaven and earth,
and the like?
THEAETETUS: Certainly he disputes, and teaches to dispute about them.
STRANGER: Then, again, in private conversation, when any universal
assertion is made about generation and essence, we know that such persons
are tremendous argufiers, and are able to impart their own skill to others.
THEAETETUS: Undoubtedly.
STRANGER: And do they not profess to make men able to dispute about law
and about politics in general?
THEAETETUS: Why, no one would have anything to say to them, if they did
not make these professions.
STRANGER: In all and every art, what the craftsman ought to say in answer
to any question is written down in a popular form, and he who likes may
learn.
THEAETETUS: I suppose that you are referring to the precepts of Protagoras
about wrestling and the other arts?
STRANGER: Yes, my friend, and about a good many other things. In a word,
is not the art of disputation a power of disputing about all things?
THEAETETUS: Certainly; there does not seem to be much which is left out.
STRANGER: But oh! my dear youth, do you suppose this possible? for perhaps
your young eyes may see things which to our duller sight do not appear.
THEAETETUS: To what are you alluding? I do not think that I understand
your present question.
STRANGER: I ask whether anybody can understand all things.
THEAETETUS: Happy would mankind be if such a thing were possible!
SOCRATES: But how can any one who is ignorant dispute in a rational manner
against him who knows?
THEAETETUS: He cannot.
STRANGER: Then why has the sophistical art such a mysterious power?
THEAETETUS: To what do you refer?
STRANGER: How do the Sophists make young men believe in their supreme and
universal wisdom? For if they neither disputed nor were thought to dispute
rightly, or being thought to do so were deemed no wiser for their
controversial skill, then, to quote your own observation, no one would give
them money or be willing to learn their art.
THEAETETUS: They certainly would not.
STRANGER: But they are willing.
THEAETETUS: Yes, they are.
STRANGER: Yes, and the reason, as I should imagine, is that they are
supposed to have knowledge of those things about which they dispute?
THEAETETUS: Certainly.
STRANGER: And they dispute about all things?
THEAETETUS: True.
STRANGER: And therefore, to their disciples, they appear to be all-wise?
THEAETETUS: Certainly.
STRANGER: But they are not; for that was shown to be impossible.
THEAETETUS: Impossible, of course.
STRANGER: Then the Sophist has been shown to have a sort of conjectural or
apparent knowledge only of all things, which is not the truth?
THEAETETUS: Exactly; no better description of him could be given.
STRANGER: Let us now take an illustration, which will still more clearly
explain his nature.
THEAETETUS: What is it?
STRANGER: I will tell you, and you shall answer me, giving your very
closest attention. Suppose that a person were to profess, not that he
could speak or dispute, but that he knew how to make and do all things, by
a single art.
THEAETETUS: All things?
STRANGER: I see that you do not understand the first word that I utter,
for you do not understand the meaning of 'all.'
THEAETETUS: No, I do not.
STRANGER: Under all things, I include you and me, and also animals and
trees.
THEAETETUS: What do you mean?
STRANGER: Suppose a person to say that he will make you and me, and all
creatures.
THEAETETUS: What would he mean by 'making'? He cannot be a husbandman;--
for you said that he is a maker of animals.
STRANGER: Yes; and I say that he is also the maker of the sea, and the
earth, and the heavens, and the gods, and of all other things; and,
further, that he can make them in no time, and sell them for a few pence.
THEAETETUS: That must be a jest.
STRANGER: And when a man says that he knows all things, and can teach them
to another at a small cost, and in a short time, is not that a jest?
THEAETETUS: Certainly.
STRANGER: And is there any more artistic or graceful form of jest than
imitation?
THEAETETUS: Certainly not; and imitation is a very comprehensive term,
which includes under one class the most diverse sorts of things.
STRANGER: We know, of course, that he who professes by one art to make all
things is really a painter, and by the painter's art makes resemblances of
real things which have the same name with them; and he can deceive the less
intelligent sort of young children, to whom he shows his pictures at a
distance, into the belief that he has the absolute power of making whatever
he likes.
THEAETETUS: Certainly.
STRANGER: And may there not be supposed to be an imitative art of
reasoning? Is it not possible to enchant the hearts of young men by words
poured through their ears, when they are still at a distance from the truth
of facts, by exhibiting to them fictitious arguments, and making them think
that they are true, and that the speaker is the wisest of men in all
things?
THEAETETUS: Yes; why should there not be another such art?
STRANGER: But as time goes on, and their hearers advance in years, and
come into closer contact with realities, and have learnt by sad experience
to see and feel the truth of things, are not the greater part of them
compelled to change many opinions which they formerly entertained, so that
the great appears small to them, and the easy difficult, and all their
dreamy speculations are overturned by the facts of life?
THEAETETUS: That is my view, as far as I can judge, although, at my age, I
may be one of those who see things at a distance only.
STRANGER: And the wish of all of us, who are your friends, is and always
will be to bring you as near to the truth as we can without the sad
reality. And now I should like you to tell me, whether the Sophist is not
visibly a magician and imitator of true being; or are we still disposed to
think that he may have a true knowledge of the various matters about which
he disputes?
THEAETETUS: But how can he, Stranger? Is there any doubt, after what has
been said, that he is to be located in one of the divisions of children's
play?
STRANGER: Then we must place him in the class of magicians and mimics.
THEAETETUS: Certainly we must.
STRANGER: And now our business is not to let the animal out, for we have
got him in a sort of dialectical net, and there is one thing which he
decidedly will not escape.
THEAETETUS: What is that?
STRANGER: The inference that he is a juggler.
THEAETETUS: Precisely my own opinion of him.
STRANGER: Then, clearly, we ought as soon as possible to divide the image-
making art, and go down into the net, and, if the Sophist does not run away
from us, to seize him according to orders and deliver him over to reason,
who is the lord of the hunt, and proclaim the capture of him; and if he
creeps into the recesses of the imitative art, and secretes himself in one
of them, to divide again and follow him up until in some sub-section of
imitation he is caught. For our method of tackling each and all is one
which neither he nor any other creature will ever escape in triumph.
THEAETETUS: Well said; and let us do as you propose.
STRANGER: Well, then, pursuing the same analytic method as before, I think
that I can discern two divisions of the imitative art, but I am not as yet
able to see in which of them the desired form is to be found.
THEAETETUS: Will you tell me first what are the two divisions of which you
are speaking?
STRANGER: One is the art of likeness-making;--generally a likeness of
anything is made by producing a copy which is executed according to the
proportions of the original, similar in length and breadth and depth, each
thing receiving also its appropriate colour.
THEAETETUS: Is not this always the aim of imitation?
STRANGER: Not always; in works either of sculpture or of painting, which
are of any magnitude, there is a certain degree of deception; for artists
were to give the true proportions of their fair works, the upper part,
which is farther off, would appear to be out of proportion in comparison
with the lower, which is nearer; and so they give up the truth in their
images and make only the proportions which appear to be beautiful,
disregarding the real ones.
THEAETETUS: Quite true.
STRANGER: And that which being other is also like, may we not fairly call
a likeness or image?
THEAETETUS: Yes.
STRANGER: And may we not, as I did just now, call that part of the
imitative art which is concerned with making such images the art of
likeness-making?
THEAETETUS: Let that be the name.
STRANGER: And what shall we call those resemblances of the beautiful,
which appear such owing to the unfavourable position of the spectator,
whereas if a person had the power of getting a correct view of works of
such magnitude, they would appear not even like that to which they profess
to be like? May we not call these 'appearances,' since they appear only
and are not really like?
THEAETETUS: Certainly.
STRANGER: There is a great deal of this kind of thing in painting, and in
all imitation.
THEAETETUS: Of course.
STRANGER: And may we not fairly call the sort of art, which produces an
appearance and not an image, phantastic art?
THEAETETUS: Most fairly.
STRANGER: These then are the two kinds of image-making--the art of making
likenesses, and phantastic or the art of making appearances?
THEAETETUS: True.
STRANGER: I was doubtful before in which of them I should place the
Sophist, nor am I even now able to see clearly; verily he is a wonderful
and inscrutable creature. And now in the cleverest manner he has got into
an impossible place.
THEAETETUS: Yes, he has.
STRANGER: Do you speak advisedly, or are you carried away at the moment by
the habit of assenting into giving a hasty answer?
THEAETETUS: May I ask to what you are referring?
STRANGER: My dear friend, we are engaged in a very difficult speculation--
there can be no doubt of that; for how a thing can appear and seem, and not
be, or how a man can say a thing which is not true, has always been and
still remains a very perplexing question. Can any one say or think that
falsehood really exists, and avoid being caught in a contradiction?
Indeed, Theaetetus, the task is a difficult one.
THEAETETUS: Why?
STRANGER: He who says that falsehood exists has the audacity to assert the
being of not-being; for this is implied in the possibility of falsehood.
But, my boy, in the days when I was a boy, the great Parmenides protested
against this doctrine, and to the end of his life he continued to inculcate
the same lesson--always repeating both in verse and out of verse:
'Keep your mind from this way of enquiry, for never will you show that not-
being is.'
Such is his testimony, which is confirmed by the very expression when
sifted a little. Would you object to begin with the consideration of the
words themselves?
THEAETETUS: Never mind about me; I am only desirous that you should carry
on the argument in the best way, and that you should take me with you.
STRANGER: Very good; and now say, do we venture to utter the forbidden
word 'not-being'?
THEAETETUS: Certainly we do.
STRANGER: Let us be serious then, and consider the question neither in
strife nor play: suppose that one of the hearers of Parmenides was asked,
'To what is the term "not-being" to be applied?'--do you know what sort of
object he would single out in reply, and what answer he would make to the
enquirer?
THEAETETUS: That is a difficult question, and one not to be answered at
all by a person like myself.
STRANGER: There is at any rate no difficulty in seeing that the predicate
'not-being' is not applicable to any being.
THEAETETUS: None, certainly.
STRANGER: And if not to being, then not to something.
THEAETETUS: Of course not.
STRANGER: It is also plain, that in speaking of something we speak of
being, for to speak of an abstract something naked and isolated from all
being is impossible.
THEAETETUS: Impossible.
STRANGER: You mean by assenting to imply that he who says something must
say some one thing?
THEAETETUS: Yes.
STRANGER: Some in the singular (ti) you would say is the sign of one, some
in the dual (tine) of two, some in the plural (tines) of many?
THEAETETUS: Exactly.
STRANGER: Then he who says 'not something' must say absolutely nothing.
THEAETETUS: Most assuredly.
STRANGER: And as we cannot admit that a man speaks and says nothing, he
who says 'not-being' does not speak at all.
THEAETETUS: The difficulty of the argument can no further go.
STRANGER: Not yet, my friend, is the time for such a word; for there still
remains of all perplexities the first and greatest, touching the very
foundation of the matter.
THEAETETUS: What do you mean? Do not be afraid to speak.
STRANGER: To that which is, may be attributed some other thing which is?
THEAETETUS: Certainly.
STRANGER: But can anything which is, be attributed to that which is not?
THEAETETUS: Impossible.
STRANGER: And all number is to be reckoned among things which are?
THEAETETUS: Yes, surely number, if anything, has a real existence.
STRANGER: Then we must not attempt to attribute to not-being number either
in the singular or plural?
THEAETETUS: The argument implies that we should be wrong in doing so.
STRANGER: But how can a man either express in words or even conceive in
thought things which are not or a thing which is not without number?
THEAETETUS: How indeed?
STRANGER: When we speak of things which are not, are we not attributing
plurality to not-being?
THEAETETUS: Certainly.
STRANGER: But, on the other hand, when we say 'what is not,' do we not
attribute unity?
THEAETETUS: Manifestly.
STRANGER: Nevertheless, we maintain that you may not and ought not to
attribute being to not-being?
THEAETETUS: Most true.
STRANGER: Do you see, then, that not-being in itself can neither be
spoken, uttered, or thought, but that it is unthinkable, unutterable,
unspeakable, indescribable?
THEAETETUS: Quite true.
STRANGER: But, if so, I was wrong in telling you just now that the
difficulty which was coming is the greatest of all.
THEAETETUS: What! is there a greater still behind?
STRANGER: Well, I am surprised, after what has been said already, that you
do not see the difficulty in which he who would refute the notion of not-
being is involved. For he is compelled to contradict himself as soon as he
makes the attempt.
THEAETETUS: What do you mean? Speak more clearly.
STRANGER: Do not expect clearness from me. For I, who maintain that not-
being has no part either in the one or many, just now spoke and am still
speaking of not-being as one; for I say 'not-being.' Do you understand?
THEAETETUS: Yes.
STRANGER: And a little while ago I said that not-being is unutterable,
unspeakable, indescribable: do you follow?
THEAETETUS: I do after a fashion.
STRANGER: When I introduced the word 'is,' did I not contradict what I
said before?
THEAETETUS: Clearly.
STRANGER: And in using the singular verb, did I not speak of not-being as
one?
THEAETETUS: Yes.
STRANGER: And when I spoke of not-being as indescribable and unspeakable
and unutterable, in using each of these words in the singular, did I not
refer to not-being as one?
THEAETETUS: Certainly.
STRANGER: And yet we say that, strictly speaking, it should not be defined
as one or many, and should not even be called 'it,' for the use of the word
'it' would imply a form of unity.
THEAETETUS: Quite true.
STRANGER: How, then, can any one put any faith in me? For now, as always,
I am unequal to the refutation of not-being. And therefore, as I was
saying, do not look to me for the right way of speaking about not-being;
but come, let us try the experiment with you.
THEAETETUS: What do you mean?
STRANGER: Make a noble effort, as becomes youth, and endeavour with all
your might to speak of not-being in a right manner, without introducing
into it either existence or unity or plurality.
THEAETETUS: It would be a strange boldness in me which would attempt the
task when I see you thus discomfited.
STRANGER: Say no more of ourselves; but until we find some one or other
who can speak of not-being without number, we must acknowledge that the
Sophist is a clever rogue who will not be got out of his hole.
THEAETETUS: Most true.
STRANGER: And if we say to him that he professes an art of making
appearances, he will grapple with us and retort our argument upon
ourselves; and when we call him an image-maker he will say, 'Pray what do
you mean at all by an image?'--and I should like to know, Theaetetus, how
we can possibly answer the younker's question?
THEAETETUS: We shall doubtless tell him of the images which are reflected
in water or in mirrors; also of sculptures, pictures, and other duplicates.
STRANGER: I see, Theaetetus, that you have never made the acquaintance of
the Sophist.
THEAETETUS: Why do you think so?
STRANGER: He will make believe to have his eyes shut, or to have none.
THEAETETUS: What do you mean?
STRANGER: When you tell him of something existing in a mirror, or in
sculpture, and address him as though he had eyes, he will laugh you to
scorn, and will pretend that he knows nothing of mirrors and streams, or of
sight at all; he will say that he is asking about an idea.
THEAETETUS: What can he mean?
STRANGER: The common notion pervading all these objects, which you speak
of as many, and yet call by the single name of image, as though it were the
unity under which they were all included. How will you maintain your
ground against him?
THEAETETUS: How, Stranger, can I describe an image except as something
fashioned in the likeness of the true?
STRANGER: And do you mean this something to be some other true thing, or
what do you mean?
THEAETETUS: Certainly not another true thing, but only a resemblance.
STRANGER: And you mean by true that which really is?
THEAETETUS: Yes.
STRANGER: And the not true is that which is the opposite of the true?
THEAETETUS: Exactly.
STRANGER: A resemblance, then, is not really real, if, as you say, not
true?
THEAETETUS: Nay, but it is in a certain sense.
STRANGER: You mean to say, not in a true sense?
THEAETETUS: Yes; it is in reality only an image.
STRANGER: Then what we call an image is in reality really unreal.
THEAETETUS: In what a strange complication of being and not-being we are
involved!
STRANGER: Strange! I should think so. See how, by his reciprocation of
opposites, the many-headed Sophist has compelled us, quite against our
will, to admit the existence of not-being.
THEAETETUS: Yes, indeed, I see.
STRANGER: The difficulty is how to define his art without falling into a
contradiction.
THEAETETUS: How do you mean? And where does the danger lie?
STRANGER: When we say that he deceives us with an illusion, and that his
art is illusory, do we mean that our soul is led by his art to think
falsely, or what do we mean?
THEAETETUS: There is nothing else to be said.
STRANGER: Again, false opinion is that form of opinion which thinks the
opposite of the truth:--You would assent?
THEAETETUS: Certainly.
STRANGER: You mean to say that false opinion thinks what is not?
THEAETETUS: Of course.
STRANGER: Does false opinion think that things which are not are not, or
that in a certain sense they are?
THEAETETUS: Things that are not must be imagined to exist in a certain
sense, if any degree of falsehood is to be possible.
STRANGER: And does not false opinion also think that things which most
certainly exist do not exist at all?
THEAETETUS: Yes.
STRANGER: And here, again, is falsehood?
THEAETETUS: Falsehood--yes.
STRANGER: And in like manner, a false proposition will be deemed to be one
which asserts the non-existence of things which are, and the existence of
things which are not.
THEAETETUS: There is no other way in which a false proposition can arise.
STRANGER: There is not; but the Sophist will deny these statements. And
indeed how can any rational man assent to them, when the very expressions
which we have just used were before acknowledged by us to be unutterable,
unspeakable, indescribable, unthinkable? Do you see his point, Theaetetus?
THEAETETUS: Of course he will say that we are contradicting ourselves when
we hazard the assertion, that falsehood exists in opinion and in words; for
in maintaining this, we are compelled over and over again to assert being
of not-being, which we admitted just now to be an utter impossibility.
STRANGER: How well you remember! And now it is high time to hold a
consultation as to what we ought to do about the Sophist; for if we persist
in looking for him in the class of false workers and magicians, you see
that the handles for objection and the difficulties which will arise are
very numerous and obvious.
THEAETETUS: They are indeed.
STRANGER: We have gone through but a very small portion of them, and they
are really infinite.
THEAETETUS: If that is the case, we cannot possibly catch the Sophist.
STRANGER: Shall we then be so faint-hearted as to give him up?
THEAETETUS: Certainly not, I should say, if we can get the slightest hold
upon him.
STRANGER: Will you then forgive me, and, as your words imply, not be
altogether displeased if I flinch a little from the grasp of such a sturdy
argument?
THEAETETUS: To be sure I will.
STRANGER: I have a yet more urgent request to make.
THEAETETUS: Which is--?
STRANGER: That you will promise not to regard me as a parricide.
THEAETETUS: And why?
STRANGER: Because, in self-defence, I must test the philosophy of my
father Parmenides, and try to prove by main force that in a certain sense
not-being is, and that being, on the other hand, is not.
THEAETETUS: Some attempt of the kind is clearly needed.
STRANGER: Yes, a blind man, as they say, might see that, and, unless these
questions are decided in one way or another, no one when he speaks of false
words, or false opinion, or idols, or images, or imitations, or
appearances, or about the arts which are concerned with them; can avoid
falling into ridiculous contradictions.
THEAETETUS: Most true.
STRANGER: And therefore I must venture to lay hands on my father's
argument; for if I am to be over-scrupulous, I shall have to give the
matter up.
THEAETETUS: Nothing in the world should ever induce us to do so.
STRANGER: I have a third little request which I wish to make.
THEAETETUS: What is it?
STRANGER: You heard me say what I have always felt and still feel--that I
have no heart for this argument?
THEAETETUS: I did.
STRANGER: I tremble at the thought of what I have said, and expect that
you will deem me mad, when you hear of my sudden changes and shiftings; let
me therefore observe, that I am examining the question entirely out of
regard for you.
THEAETETUS: There is no reason for you to fear that I shall impute any
impropriety to you, if you attempt this refutation and proof; take heart,
therefore, and proceed.
STRANGER: And where shall I begin the perilous enterprise? I think that
the road which I must take is--
THEAETETUS: Which?--Let me hear.
STRANGER: I think that we had better, first of all, consider the points
which at present are regarded as self-evident, lest we may have fallen into
some confusion, and be too ready to assent to one another, fancying that we
are quite clear about them.
THEAETETUS: Say more distinctly what you mean.
STRANGER: I think that Parmenides, and all ever yet undertook to determine
the number and nature of existences, talked to us in rather a light and
easy strain.
THEAETETUS: How?
STRANGER: As if we had been children, to whom they repeated each his own
mythus or story;--one said that there were three principles, and that at
one time there was war between certain of them; and then again there was
peace, and they were married and begat children, and brought them up; and
another spoke of two principles,--a moist and a dry, or a hot and a cold,
and made them marry and cohabit. The Eleatics, however, in our part of the
world, say that all things are many in name, but in nature one; this is
their mythus, which goes back to Xenophanes, and is even older. Then there
are Ionian, and in more recent times Sicilian muses, who have arrived at
the conclusion that to unite the two principles is safer, and to say that
being is one and many, and that these are held together by enmity and
friendship, ever parting, ever meeting, as the severer Muses assert, while
the gentler ones do not insist on the perpetual strife and peace, but admit
a relaxation and alternation of them; peace and unity sometimes prevailing
under the sway of Aphrodite, and then again plurality and war, by reason of
a principle of strife. Whether any of them spoke the truth in all this is
hard to determine; besides, antiquity and famous men should have reverence,
and not be liable to accusations so serious. Yet one thing may be said of
them without offence--
THEAETETUS: What thing?
STRANGER: That they went on their several ways disdaining to notice people
like ourselves; they did not care whether they took us with them, or left
us behind them.
THEAETETUS: How do you mean?
STRANGER: I mean to say, that when they talk of one, two, or more
elements, which are or have become or are becoming, or again of heat
mingling with cold, assuming in some other part of their works separations
and mixtures,--tell me, Theaetetus, do you understand what they mean by
these expressions? When I was a younger man, I used to fancy that I
understood quite well what was meant by the term 'not-being,' which is our
present subject of dispute; and now you see in what a fix we are about it.
THEAETETUS: I see.
STRANGER: And very likely we have been getting into the same perplexity
about 'being,' and yet may fancy that when anybody utters the word, we
understand him quite easily, although we do not know about not-being. But
we may be; equally ignorant of both.
THEAETETUS: I dare say.
STRANGER: And the same may be said of all the terms just mentioned.
THEAETETUS: True.
STRANGER: The consideration of most of them may be deferred; but we had
better now discuss the chief captain and leader of them.
THEAETETUS: Of what are you speaking? You clearly think that we must
first investigate what people mean by the word 'being.'
STRANGER: You follow close at my heels, Theaetetus. For the right method,
I conceive, will be to call into our presence the dualistic philosophers
and to interrogate them. 'Come,' we will say, 'Ye, who affirm that hot and
cold or any other two principles are the universe, what is this term which
you apply to both of them, and what do you mean when you say that both and
each of them "are"? How are we to understand the word "are"? Upon your
view, are we to suppose that there is a third principle over and above the
other two,--three in all, and not two? For clearly you cannot say that one
of the two principles is being, and yet attribute being equally to both of
them; for, if you did, whichever of the two is identified with being, will
comprehend the other; and so they will be one and not two.'
THEAETETUS: Very true.
STRANGER: But perhaps you mean to give the name of 'being' to both of them
together?
THEAETETUS: Quite likely.
STRANGER: 'Then, friends,' we shall reply to them, 'the answer is plainly
that the two will still be resolved into one.'
THEAETETUS: Most true.
STRANGER: 'Since, then, we are in a difficulty, please to tell us what you
mean, when you speak of being; for there can be no doubt that you always
from the first understood your own meaning, whereas we once thought that we
understood you, but now we are in a great strait. Please to begin by
explaining this matter to us, and let us no longer fancy that we understand
you, when we entirely misunderstand you.' There will be no impropriety in
our demanding an answer to this question, either of the dualists or of the
pluralists?
THEAETETUS: Certainly not.
STRANGER: And what about the assertors of the oneness of the all--must we
not endeavour to ascertain from them what they mean by 'being'?
THEAETETUS: By all means.
STRANGER: Then let them answer this question: One, you say, alone is?
'Yes,' they will reply.
THEAETETUS: True.
STRANGER: And there is something which you call 'being'?
THEAETETUS: 'Yes.'
STRANGER: And is being the same as one, and do you apply two names to the
same thing?
THEAETETUS: What will be their answer, Stranger?
STRANGER: It is clear, Theaetetus, that he who asserts the unity of being
will find a difficulty in answering this or any other question.
THEAETETUS: Why so?
STRANGER: To admit of two names, and to affirm that there is nothing but
unity, is surely ridiculous?
THEAETETUS: Certainly.
STRANGER: And equally irrational to admit that a name is anything?
THEAETETUS: How so?
STRANGER: To distinguish the name from the thing, implies duality.
THEAETETUS: Yes.
STRANGER: And yet he who identifies the name with the thing will be
compelled to say that it is the name of nothing, or if he says that it is
the name of something, even then the name will only be the name of a name,
and of nothing else.
THEAETETUS: True.
STRANGER: And the one will turn out to be only one of one, and being
absolute unity, will represent a mere name.
THEAETETUS: Certainly.
STRANGER: And would they say that the whole is other than the one that is,
or the same with it?
THEAETETUS: To be sure they would, and they actually say so.
STRANGER: If being is a whole, as Parmenides sings,--
'Every way like unto the fullness of a well-rounded sphere,
Evenly balanced from the centre on every side,
And must needs be neither greater nor less in any way,
Neither on this side nor on that--'
then being has a centre and extremes, and, having these, must also have
parts.
THEAETETUS: True.
STRANGER: Yet that which has parts may have the attribute of unity in all
the parts, and in this way being all and a whole, may be one?
THEAETETUS: Certainly.
STRANGER: But that of which this is the condition cannot be absolute
unity?
THEAETETUS: Why not?
STRANGER: Because, according to right reason, that which is truly one must
be affirmed to be absolutely indivisible.
THEAETETUS: Certainly.
STRANGER: But this indivisible, if made up of many parts, will contradict
reason.
THEAETETUS: I understand.
STRANGER: Shall we say that being is one and a whole, because it has the
attribute of unity? Or shall we say that being is not a whole at all?
THEAETETUS: That is a hard alternative to offer.
STRANGER: Most true; for being, having in a certain sense the attribute of
one, is yet proved not to be the same as one, and the all is therefore more
than one.
THEAETETUS: Yes.
STRANGER: And yet if being be not a whole, through having the attribute of
unity, and there be such a thing as an absolute whole, being lacks
something of its own nature?
THEAETETUS: Certainly.
STRANGER: Upon this view, again, being, having a defect of being, will
become not-being?
THEAETETUS: True.
STRANGER: And, again, the all becomes more than one, for being and the
whole will each have their separate nature.
THEAETETUS: Yes.
STRANGER: But if the whole does not exist at all, all the previous
difficulties remain the same, and there will be the further difficulty,
that besides having no being, being can never have come into being.
THEAETETUS: Why so?
STRANGER: Because that which comes into being always comes into being as a
whole, so that he who does not give whole a place among beings, cannot
speak either of essence or generation as existing.
THEAETETUS: Yes, that certainly appears to be true.
STRANGER: Again; how can that which is not a whole have any quantity? For
that which is of a certain quantity must necessarily be the whole of that
quantity.
THEAETETUS: Exactly.
STRANGER: And there will be innumerable other points, each of them causing
infinite trouble to him who says that being is either one or two.
THEAETETUS: The difficulties which are dawning upon us prove this; for one
objection connects with another, and they are always involving what has
preceded in a greater and worse perplexity.
STRANGER: We are far from having exhausted the more exact thinkers who
treat of being and not-being. But let us be content to leave them, and
proceed to view those who speak less precisely; and we shall find as the
result of all, that the nature of being is quite as difficult to comprehend
as that of not-being.
THEAETETUS: Then now we will go to the others.
STRANGER: There appears to be a sort of war of Giants and Gods going on
amongst them; they are fighting with one another about the nature of
essence.
THEAETETUS: How is that?
STRANGER: Some of them are dragging down all things from heaven and from
the unseen to earth, and they literally grasp in their hands rocks and
oaks; of these they lay hold, and obstinately maintain, that the things
only which can be touched or handled have being or essence, because they
define being and body as one, and if any one else says that what is not a
body exists they altogether despise him, and will hear of nothing but body.
THEAETETUS: I have often met with such men, and terrible fellows they are.
STRANGER: And that is the reason why their opponents cautiously defend
themselves from above, out of an unseen world, mightily contending that
true essence consists of certain intelligible and incorporeal ideas; the
bodies of the materialists, which by them are maintained to be the very
truth, they break up into little bits by their arguments, and affirm them
to be, not essence, but generation and motion. Between the two armies,
Theaetetus, there is always an endless conflict raging concerning these
matters.
THEAETETUS: True.
STRANGER: Let us ask each party in turn, to give an account of that which
they call essence.
THEAETETUS: How shall we get it out of them?
STRANGER: With those who make being to consist in ideas, there will be
less difficulty, for they are civil people enough; but there will be very
great difficulty, or rather an absolute impossibility, in getting an
opinion out of those who drag everything down to matter. Shall I tell you
what we must do?
THEAETETUS: What?
STRANGER: Let us, if we can, really improve them; but if this is not
possible, let us imagine them to be better than they are, and more willing
to answer in accordance with the rules of argument, and then their opinion
will be more worth having; for that which better men acknowledge has more
weight than that which is acknowledged by inferior men. Moreover we are no
respecters of persons, but seekers after truth.
THEAETETUS: Very good.
STRANGER: Then now, on the supposition that they are improved, let us ask
them to state their views, and do you interpret them.
THEAETETUS: Agreed.
STRANGER: Let them say whether they would admit that there is such a thing
as a mortal animal.
THEAETETUS: Of course they would.
STRANGER: And do they not acknowledge this to be a body having a soul?
THEAETETUS: Certainly they do.
STRANGER: Meaning to say that the soul is something which exists?
THEAETETUS: True.
STRANGER: And do they not say that one soul is just, and another unjust,
and that one soul is wise, and another foolish?
THEAETETUS: Certainly.
STRANGER: And that the just and wise soul becomes just and wise by the
possession of justice and wisdom, and the opposite under opposite
circumstances?
THEAETETUS: Yes, they do.
STRANGER: But surely that which may be present or may be absent will be
admitted by them to exist?
THEAETETUS: Certainly.
STRANGER: And, allowing that justice, wisdom, the other virtues, and their
opposites exist, as well as a soul in which they inhere, do they affirm any
of them to be visible and tangible, or are they all invisible?
THEAETETUS: They would say that hardly any of them are visible.
STRANGER: And would they say that they are corporeal?
THEAETETUS: They would distinguish: the soul would be said by them to
have a body; but as to the other qualities of justice, wisdom, and the
like, about which you asked, they would not venture either to deny their
existence, or to maintain that they were all corporeal.
STRANGER: Verily, Theaetetus, I perceive a great improvement in them; the
real aborigines, children of the dragon's teeth, would have been deterred
by no shame at all, but would have obstinately asserted that nothing is
which they are not able to squeeze in their hands.
THEAETETUS: That is pretty much their notion.
STRANGER: Let us push the question; for if they will admit that any, even
the smallest particle of being, is incorporeal, it is enough; they must
then say what that nature is which is common to both the corporeal and
incorporeal, and which they have in their mind's eye when they say of both
of them that they 'are.' Perhaps they may be in a difficulty; and if this
is the case, there is a possibility that they may accept a notion of ours
respecting the nature of being, having nothing of their own to offer.
THEAETETUS: What is the notion? Tell me, and we shall soon see.
STRANGER: My notion would be, that anything which possesses any sort of
power to affect another, or to be affected by another, if only for a single
moment, however trifling the cause and however slight the effect, has real
existence; and I hold that the definition of being is simply power.
THEAETETUS: They accept your suggestion, having nothing better of their
own to offer.
STRANGER: Very good; perhaps we, as well as they, may one day change our
minds; but, for the present, this may be regarded as the understanding
which is established with them.
THEAETETUS: Agreed.
STRANGER: Let us now go to the friends of ideas; of their opinions, too,
you shall be the interpreter.
THEAETETUS: I will.
STRANGER: To them we say--You would distinguish essence from generation?
THEAETETUS: 'Yes,' they reply.
STRANGER: And you would allow that we participate in generation with the
body, and through perception, but we participate with the soul through
thought in true essence; and essence you would affirm to be always the same
and immutable, whereas generation or becoming varies?
THEAETETUS: Yes; that is what we should affirm.
STRANGER: Well, fair sirs, we say to them, what is this participation,
which you assert of both? Do you agree with our recent definition?
THEAETETUS: What definition?
STRANGER: We said that being was an active or passive energy, arising out
of a certain power which proceeds from elements meeting with one another.
Perhaps your ears, Theaetetus, may fail to catch their answer, which I
recognize because I have been accustomed to hear it.
THEAETETUS: And what is their answer?
STRANGER: They deny the truth of what we were just now saying to the
aborigines about existence.
THEAETETUS: What was that?
STRANGER: Any power of doing or suffering in a degree however slight was
held by us to be a sufficient definition of being?
THEAETETUS: True.
STRANGER: They deny this, and say that the power of doing or suffering is
confined to becoming, and that neither power is applicable to being.
THEAETETUS: And is there not some truth in what they say?
STRANGER: Yes; but our reply will be, that we want to ascertain from them
more distinctly, whether they further admit that the soul knows, and that
being or essence is known.
THEAETETUS: There can be no doubt that they say so.
STRANGER: And is knowing and being known doing or suffering, or both, or
is the one doing and the other suffering, or has neither any share in
either?
THEAETETUS: Clearly, neither has any share in either; for if they say
anything else, they will contradict themselves.
STRANGER: I understand; but they will allow that if to know is active,
then, of course, to be known is passive. And on this view being, in so far
as it is known, is acted upon by knowledge, and is therefore in motion; for
that which is in a state of rest cannot be acted upon, as we affirm.
THEAETETUS: True.
STRANGER: And, O heavens, can we ever be made to believe that motion and
life and soul and mind are not present with perfect being? Can we imagine
that being is devoid of life and mind, and exists in awful unmeaningness an
everlasting fixture?
THEAETETUS: That would be a dreadful thing to admit, Stranger.
STRANGER: But shall we say that has mind and not life?
THEAETETUS: How is that possible?
STRANGER: Or shall we say that both inhere in perfect being, but that it
has no soul which contains them?
THEAETETUS: And in what other way can it contain them?
STRANGER: Or that being has mind and life and soul, but although endowed
with soul remains absolutely unmoved?
THEAETETUS: All three suppositions appear to me to be irrational.
STRANGER: Under being, then, we must include motion, and that which is
moved.
THEAETETUS: Certainly.
STRANGER: Then, Theaetetus, our inference is, that if there is no motion,
neither is there any mind anywhere, or about anything or belonging to any
one.
THEAETETUS: Quite true.
STRANGER: And yet this equally follows, if we grant that all things are in
motion--upon this view too mind has no existence.
THEAETETUS: How so?
STRANGER: Do you think that sameness of condition and mode and subject
could ever exist without a principle of rest?
THEAETETUS: Certainly not.
STRANGER: Can you see how without them mind could exist, or come into
existence anywhere?
THEAETETUS: No.
STRANGER: And surely contend we must in every possible way against him who
would annihilate knowledge and reason and mind, and yet ventures to speak
confidently about anything.
THEAETETUS: Yes, with all our might.
STRANGER: Then the philosopher, who has the truest reverence for these
qualities, cannot possibly accept the notion of those who say that the
whole is at rest, either as unity or in many forms: and he will be utterly
deaf to those who assert universal motion. As children say entreatingly
'Give us both,' so he will include both the moveable and immoveable in his
definition of being and all.
THEAETETUS: Most true.
STRANGER: And now, do we seem to have gained a fair notion of being?
THEAETETUS: Yes truly.
STRANGER: Alas, Theaetetus, methinks that we are now only beginning to see
the real difficulty of the enquiry into the nature of it.
THEAETETUS: What do you mean?
STRANGER: O my friend, do you not see that nothing can exceed our
ignorance, and yet we fancy that we are saying something good?
THEAETETUS: I certainly thought that we were; and I do not at all
understand how we never found out our desperate case.
STRANGER: Reflect: after having made these admissions, may we not be
justly asked the same questions which we ourselves were asking of those who
said that all was hot and cold?
THEAETETUS: What were they? Will you recall them to my mind?
STRANGER: To be sure I will, and I will remind you of them, by putting the
same questions to you which I did to them, and then we shall get on.
THEAETETUS: True.
STRANGER: Would you not say that rest and motion are in the most entire
opposition to one another?
THEAETETUS: Of course.
STRANGER: And yet you would say that both and either of them equally are?
THEAETETUS: I should.
STRANGER: And when you admit that both or either of them are, do you mean
to say that both or either of them are in motion?
THEAETETUS: Certainly not.
STRANGER: Or do you wish to imply that they are both at rest, when you say
that they are?
THEAETETUS: Of course not.
STRANGER: Then you conceive of being as some third and distinct nature,
under which rest and motion are alike included; and, observing that they
both participate in being, you declare that they are.
THEAETETUS: Truly we seem to have an intimation that being is some third
thing, when we say that rest and motion are.
STRANGER: Then being is not the combination of rest and motion, but
something different from them.
THEAETETUS: So it would appear.
STRANGER: Being, then, according to its own nature, is neither in motion
nor at rest.
THEAETETUS: That is very much the truth.
STRANGER: Where, then, is a man to look for help who would have any clear
or fixed notion of being in his mind?
THEAETETUS: Where, indeed?
STRANGER: I scarcely think that he can look anywhere; for that which is
not in motion must be at rest, and again, that which is not at rest must be
in motion; but being is placed outside of both these classes. Is this
possible?
THEAETETUS: Utterly impossible.
STRANGER: Here, then, is another thing which we ought to bear in mind.
THEAETETUS: What?
STRANGER: When we were asked to what we were to assign the appellation of
not-being, we were in the greatest difficulty:--do you remember?
THEAETETUS: To be sure.
STRANGER: And are we not now in as great a difficulty about being?
THEAETETUS: I should say, Stranger, that we are in one which is, if
possible, even greater.
STRANGER: Then let us acknowledge the difficulty; and as being and not-
being are involved in the same perplexity, there is hope that when the one
appears more or less distinctly, the other will equally appear; and if we
are able to see neither, there may still be a chance of steering our way in
between them, without any great discredit.
THEAETETUS: Very good.
STRANGER: Let us enquire, then, how we come to predicate many names of the
same thing.
THEAETETUS: Give an example.
STRANGER: I mean that we speak of man, for example, under many names--that
we attribute to him colours and forms and magnitudes and virtues and vices,
in all of which instances and in ten thousand others we not only speak of
him as a man, but also as good, and having numberless other attributes, and
in the same way anything else which we originally supposed to be one is
described by us as many, and under many names.
THEAETETUS: That is true.
STRANGER: And thus we provide a rich feast for tyros, whether young or
old; for there is nothing easier than to argue that the one cannot be many,
or the many one; and great is their delight in denying that a man is good;
for man, they insist, is man and good is good. I dare say that you have
met with persons who take an interest in such matters--they are often
elderly men, whose meagre sense is thrown into amazement by these
discoveries of theirs, which they believe to be the height of wisdom.
THEAETETUS: Certainly, I have.
STRANGER: Then, not to exclude any one who has ever speculated at all upon
the nature of being, let us put our questions to them as well as to our
former friends.
THEAETETUS: What questions?
STRANGER: Shall we refuse to attribute being to motion and rest, or
anything to anything, and assume that they do not mingle, and are incapable
of participating in one another? Or shall we gather all into one class of
things communicable with one another? Or are some things communicable and
others not?--Which of these alternatives, Theaetetus, will they prefer?
THEAETETUS: I have nothing to answer on their behalf. Suppose that you
take all these hypotheses in turn, and see what are the consequences which
follow from each of them.
STRANGER: Very good, and first let us assume them to say that nothing is
capable of participating in anything else in any respect; in that case rest
and motion cannot participate in being at all.
THEAETETUS: They cannot.
STRANGER: But would either of them be if not participating in being?
THEAETETUS: No.
STRANGER: Then by this admission everything is instantly overturned, as
well the doctrine of universal motion as of universal rest, and also the
doctrine of those who distribute being into immutable and everlasting
kinds; for all these add on a notion of being, some affirming that things
'are' truly in motion, and others that they 'are' truly at rest.
THEAETETUS: Just so.
STRANGER: Again, those who would at one time compound, and at another
resolve all things, whether making them into one and out of one creating
infinity, or dividing them into finite elements, and forming compounds out
of these; whether they suppose the processes of creation to be successive
or continuous, would be talking nonsense in all this if there were no
admixture.
THEAETETUS: True.
STRANGER: Most ridiculous of all will the men themselves be who want to
carry out the argument and yet forbid us to call anything, because
participating in some affection from another, by the name of that other.
THEAETETUS: Why so?
STRANGER: Why, because they are compelled to use the words 'to be,'
'apart,' 'from others,' 'in itself,' and ten thousand more, which they
cannot give up, but must make the connecting links of discourse; and
therefore they do not require to be refuted by others, but their enemy, as
the saying is, inhabits the same house with them; they are always carrying
about with them an adversary, like the wonderful ventriloquist, Eurycles,
who out of their own bellies audibly contradicts them.
THEAETETUS: Precisely so; a very true and exact illustration.
STRANGER: And now, if we suppose that all things have the power of
communion with one another--what will follow?
THEAETETUS: Even I can solve that riddle.
STRANGER: How?
THEAETETUS: Why, because motion itself would be at rest, and rest again in
motion, if they could be attributed to one another.
STRANGER: But this is utterly impossible.
THEAETETUS: Of course.
STRANGER: Then only the third hypothesis remains.
THEAETETUS: True.
STRANGER: For, surely, either all things have communion with all; or
nothing with any other thing; or some things communicate with some things
and others not.
THEAETETUS: Certainly.
STRANGER: And two out of these three suppositions have been found to be
impossible.
THEAETETUS: Yes.
STRANGER: Every one then, who desires to answer truly, will adopt the
third and remaining hypothesis of the communion of some with some.
THEAETETUS: Quite true.
STRANGER: This communion of some with some may be illustrated by the case
of letters; for some letters do not fit each other, while others do.
THEAETETUS: Of course.
STRANGER: And the vowels, especially, are a sort of bond which pervades
all the other letters, so that without a vowel one consonant cannot be
joined to another.
THEAETETUS: True.
STRANGER: But does every one know what letters will unite with what? Or
is art required in order to do so?
THEAETETUS: Art is required.
STRANGER: What art?
THEAETETUS: The art of grammar.
STRANGER: And is not this also true of sounds high and low?--Is not he who
has the art to know what sounds mingle, a musician, and he who is ignorant,
not a musician?
THEAETETUS: Yes.
STRANGER: And we shall find this to be generally true of art or the
absence of art.
THEAETETUS: Of course.
STRANGER: And as classes are admitted by us in like manner to be some of
them capable and others incapable of intermixture, must not he who would
rightly show what kinds will unite and what will not, proceed by the help
of science in the path of argument? And will he not ask if the connecting
links are universal, and so capable of intermixture with all things; and
again, in divisions, whether there are not other universal classes, which
make them possible?
THEAETETUS: To be sure he will require science, and, if I am not mistaken,
the very greatest of all sciences.
STRANGER: How are we to call it? By Zeus, have we not lighted unwittingly
upon our free and noble science, and in looking for the Sophist have we not
entertained the philosopher unawares?
THEAETETUS: What do you mean?
STRANGER: Should we not say that the division according to classes, which
neither makes the same other, nor makes other the same, is the business of
the dialectical science?
THEAETETUS: That is what we should say.
STRANGER: Then, surely, he who can divide rightly is able to see clearly
one form pervading a scattered multitude, and many different forms
contained under one higher form; and again, one form knit together into a
single whole and pervading many such wholes, and many forms, existing only
in separation and isolation. This is the knowledge of classes which
determines where they can have communion with one another and where not.
THEAETETUS: Quite true.
STRANGER: And the art of dialectic would be attributed by you only to the
philosopher pure and true?
THEAETETUS: Who but he can be worthy?
STRANGER: In this region we shall always discover the philosopher, if we
look for him; like the Sophist, he is not easily discovered, but for a
different reason.
THEAETETUS: For what reason?
STRANGER: Because the Sophist runs away into the darkness of not-being, in
which he has learned by habit to feel about, and cannot be discovered
because of the darkness of the place. Is not that true?
THEAETETUS: It seems to be so.
STRANGER: And the philosopher, always holding converse through reason with
the idea of being, is also dark from excess of light; for the souls of the
many have no eye which can endure the vision of the divine.
THEAETETUS: Yes; that seems to be quite as true as the other.
STRANGER: Well, the philosopher may hereafter be more fully considered by
us, if we are disposed; but the Sophist must clearly not be allowed to
escape until we have had a good look at him.
THEAETETUS: Very good.
STRANGER: Since, then, we are agreed that some classes have a communion
with one another, and others not, and some have communion with a few and
others with many, and that there is no reason why some should not have
universal communion with all, let us now pursue the enquiry, as the
argument suggests, not in relation to all ideas, lest the multitude of them
should confuse us, but let us select a few of those which are reckoned to
be the principal ones, and consider their several natures and their
capacity of communion with one another, in order that if we are not able to
apprehend with perfect clearness the notions of being and not-being, we may
at least not fall short in the consideration of them, so far as they come
within the scope of the present enquiry, if peradventure we may be allowed
to assert the reality of not-being, and yet escape unscathed.
THEAETETUS: We must do so.
STRANGER: The most important of all the genera are those which we were
just now mentioning--being and rest and motion.
THEAETETUS: Yes, by far.
STRANGER: And two of these are, as we affirm, incapable of communion with
one another.
THEAETETUS: Quite incapable.
STRANGER: Whereas being surely has communion with both of them, for both
of them are?
THEAETETUS: Of course.
STRANGER: That makes up three of them.
THEAETETUS: To be sure.
STRANGER: And each of them is other than the remaining two, but the same
with itself.
THEAETETUS: True.
STRANGER: But then, what is the meaning of these two words, 'same' and
'other'? Are they two new kinds other than the three, and yet always of
necessity intermingling with them, and are we to have five kinds instead of
three; or when we speak of the same and other, are we unconsciously
speaking of one of the three first kinds?
THEAETETUS: Very likely we are.
STRANGER: But, surely, motion and rest are neither the other nor the same.
THEAETETUS: How is that?
STRANGER: Whatever we attribute to motion and rest in common, cannot be
either of them.
THEAETETUS: Why not?
STRANGER: Because motion would be at rest and rest in motion, for either
of them, being predicated of both, will compel the other to change into the
opposite of its own nature, because partaking of its opposite.
THEAETETUS: Quite true.
STRANGER: Yet they surely both partake of the same and of the other?
THEAETETUS: Yes.
STRANGER: Then we must not assert that motion, any more than rest, is
either the same or the other.
THEAETETUS: No; we must not.
STRANGER: But are we to conceive that being and the same are identical?
THEAETETUS: Possibly.
STRANGER: But if they are identical, then again in saying that motion and
rest have being, we should also be saying that they are the same.
THEAETETUS: Which surely cannot be.
STRANGER: Then being and the same cannot be one.
THEAETETUS: Scarcely.
STRANGER: Then we may suppose the same to be a fourth class, which is now
to be added to the three others.
THEAETETUS: Quite true.
STRANGER: And shall we call the other a fifth class? Or should we
consider being and other to be two names of the same class?
THEAETETUS: Very likely.
STRANGER: But you would agree, if I am not mistaken, that existences are
relative as well as absolute?
THEAETETUS: Certainly.
STRANGER: And the other is always relative to other?
THEAETETUS: True.
STRANGER: But this would not be the case unless being and the other
entirely differed; for, if the other, like being, were absolute as well as
relative, then there would have been a kind of other which was not other
than other. And now we find that what is other must of necessity be what
it is in relation to some other.
THEAETETUS: That is the true state of the case.
STRANGER: Then we must admit the other as the fifth of our selected
classes.
THEAETETUS: Yes.
STRANGER: And the fifth class pervades all classes, for they all differ
from one another, not by reason of their own nature, but because they
partake of the idea of the other.
THEAETETUS: Quite true.
STRANGER: Then let us now put the case with reference to each of the five.
THEAETETUS: How?
STRANGER: First there is motion, which we affirm to be absolutely 'other'
than rest: what else can we say?
THEAETETUS: It is so.
STRANGER: And therefore is not rest.
THEAETETUS: Certainly not.
STRANGER: And yet is, because partaking of being.
THEAETETUS: True.
STRANGER: Again, motion is other than the same?
THEAETETUS: Just so.
STRANGER: And is therefore not the same.
THEAETETUS: It is not.
STRANGER: Yet, surely, motion is the same, because all things partake of
the same.
THEAETETUS: Very true.
STRANGER: Then we must admit, and not object to say, that motion is the
same and is not the same, for we do not apply the terms 'same' and 'not the
same,' in the same sense; but we call it the 'same,' in relation to itself,
because partaking of the same; and not the same, because having communion
with the other, it is thereby severed from the same, and has become not
that but other, and is therefore rightly spoken of as 'not the same.'
THEAETETUS: To be sure.
STRANGER: And if absolute motion in any point of view partook of rest,
there would be no absurdity in calling motion stationary.
THEAETETUS: Quite right,--that is, on the supposition that some classes
mingle with one another, and others not.
STRANGER: That such a communion of kinds is according to nature, we had
already proved before we arrived at this part of our discussion.
THEAETETUS: Certainly.
STRANGER: Let us proceed, then. May we not say that motion is other than
the other, having been also proved by us to be other than the same and
other than rest?
THEAETETUS: That is certain.
STRANGER: Then, according to this view, motion is other and also not
other?
THEAETETUS: True.
STRANGER: What is the next step? Shall we say that motion is other than
the three and not other than the fourth,--for we agreed that there are five
classes about and in the sphere of which we proposed to make enquiry?
THEAETETUS: Surely we cannot admit that the number is less than it
appeared to be just now.
STRANGER: Then we may without fear contend that motion is other than
being?
THEAETETUS: Without the least fear.
STRANGER: The plain result is that motion, since it partakes of being,
really is and also is not?
THEAETETUS: Nothing can be plainer.
STRANGER: Then not-being necessarily exists in the case of motion and of
every class; for the nature of the other entering into them all, makes each
of them other than being, and so non-existent; and therefore of all of
them, in like manner, we may truly say that they are not; and again,
inasmuch as they partake of being, that they are and are existent.
THEAETETUS: So we may assume.
STRANGER: Every class, then, has plurality of being and infinity of not-
being.
THEAETETUS: So we must infer.
STRANGER: And being itself may be said to be other than the other kinds.
THEAETETUS: Certainly.
STRANGER: Then we may infer that being is not, in respect of as many other
things as there are; for not-being these it is itself one, and is not the
other things, which are infinite in number.
THEAETETUS: That is not far from the truth.
STRANGER: And we must not quarrel with this result, since it is of the
nature of classes to have communion with one another; and if any one denies
our present statement [viz., that being is not, etc.], let him first argue
with our former conclusion [i.e., respecting the communion of ideas], and
then he may proceed to argue with what follows.
THEAETETUS: Nothing can be fairer.
STRANGER: Let me ask you to consider a further question.
THEAETETUS: What question?
STRANGER: When we speak of not-being, we speak, I suppose, not of
something opposed to being, but only different.
THEAETETUS: What do you mean?
STRANGER: When we speak of something as not great, does the expression
seem to you to imply what is little any more than what is equal?
THEAETETUS: Certainly not.
STRANGER: The negative particles, ou and me, when prefixed to words, do
not imply opposition, but only difference from the words, or more correctly
from the things represented by the words, which follow them.
THEAETETUS: Quite true.
STRANGER: There is another point to be considered, if you do not object.
THEAETETUS: What is it?
STRANGER: The nature of the other appears to me to be divided into
fractions like knowledge.
THEAETETUS: How so?
STRANGER: Knowledge, like the other, is one; and yet the various parts of
knowledge have each of them their own particular name, and hence there are
many arts and kinds of knowledge.
THEAETETUS: Quite true.
STRANGER: And is not the case the same with the parts of the other, which
is also one?
THEAETETUS: Very likely; but will you tell me how?
STRANGER: There is some part of the other which is opposed to the
beautiful?
THEAETETUS: There is.
STRANGER: Shall we say that this has or has not a name?
THEAETETUS: It has; for whatever we call not-beautiful is other than the
beautiful, not than something else.
STRANGER: And now tell me another thing.
THEAETETUS: What?
STRANGER: Is the not-beautiful anything but this--an existence parted off
from a certain kind of existence, and again from another point of view
opposed to an existing something?
THEAETETUS: True.
STRANGER: Then the not-beautiful turns out to be the opposition of being
to being?
THEAETETUS: Very true.
STRANGER: But upon this view, is the beautiful a more real and the not-
beautiful a less real existence?
THEAETETUS: Not at all.
STRANGER: And the not-great may be said to exist, equally with the great?
THEAETETUS: Yes.
STRANGER: And, in the same way, the just must be placed in the same
category with the not-just--the one cannot be said to have any more
existence than the other.
THEAETETUS: True.
STRANGER: The same may be said of other things; seeing that the nature of
the other has a real existence, the parts of this nature must equally be
supposed to exist.
THEAETETUS: Of course.
STRANGER: Then, as would appear, the opposition of a part of the other,
and of a part of being, to one another, is, if I may venture to say so, as
truly essence as being itself, and implies not the opposite of being, but
only what is other than being.
THEAETETUS: Beyond question.
STRANGER: What then shall we call it?
THEAETETUS: Clearly, not-being; and this is the very nature for which the
Sophist compelled us to search.
STRANGER: And has not this, as you were saying, as real an existence as
any other class? May I not say with confidence that not-being has an
assured existence, and a nature of its own? Just as the great was found to
be great and the beautiful beautiful, and the not-great not-great, and the
not-beautiful not-beautiful, in the same manner not-being has been found to
be and is not-being, and is to be reckoned one among the many classes of
being. Do you, Theaetetus, still feel any doubt of this?
THEAETETUS: None whatever.
STRANGER: Do you observe that our scepticism has carried us beyond the
range of Parmenides' prohibition?
THEAETETUS: In what?
STRANGER: We have advanced to a further point, and shown him more than he
forbad us to investigate.
THEAETETUS: How is that?
STRANGER: Why, because he says--
'Not-being never is, and do thou keep thy thoughts from this way of
enquiry.'
THEAETETUS: Yes, he says so.
STRANGER: Whereas, we have not only proved that things which are not are,
but we have shown what form of being not-being is; for we have shown that
the nature of the other is, and is distributed over all things in their
relations to one another, and whatever part of the other is contrasted with
being, this is precisely what we have ventured to call not-being.
THEAETETUS: And surely, Stranger, we were quite right.
STRANGER: Let not any one say, then, that while affirming the opposition
of not-being to being, we still assert the being of not-being; for as to
whether there is an opposite of being, to that enquiry we have long said
good-bye--it may or may not be, and may or may not be capable of
definition. But as touching our present account of not-being, let a man
either convince us of error, or, so long as he cannot, he too must say, as
we are saying, that there is a communion of classes, and that being, and
difference or other, traverse all things and mutually interpenetrate, so
that the other partakes of being, and by reason of this participation is,
and yet is not that of which it partakes, but other, and being other than
being, it is clearly a necessity that not-being should be. And again,
being, through partaking of the other, becomes a class other than the
remaining classes, and being other than all of them, is not each one of
them, and is not all the rest, so that undoubtedly there are thousands upon
thousands of cases in which being is not, and all other things, whether
regarded individually or collectively, in many respects are, and in many
respects are not.
THEAETETUS: True.
STRANGER: And he who is sceptical of this contradiction, must think how he
can find something better to say; or if he sees a puzzle, and his pleasure
is to drag words this way and that, the argument will prove to him, that he
is not making a worthy use of his faculties; for there is no charm in such
puzzles, and there is no difficulty in detecting them; but we can tell him
of something else the pursuit of which is noble and also difficult.
THEAETETUS: What is it?
STRANGER: A thing of which I have already spoken;--letting alone these
puzzles as involving no difficulty, he should be able to follow and
criticize in detail every argument, and when a man says that the same is in
a manner other, or that other is the same, to understand and refute him
from his own point of view, and in the same respect in which he asserts
either of these affections. But to show that somehow and in some sense the
same is other, or the other same, or the great small, or the like unlike;
and to delight in always bringing forward such contradictions, is no real
refutation, but is clearly the new-born babe of some one who is only
beginning to approach the problem of being.
THEAETETUS: To be sure.
STRANGER: For certainly, my friend, the attempt to separate all existences
from one another is a barbarism and utterly unworthy of an educated or
philosophical mind.
THEAETETUS: Why so?
STRANGER: The attempt at universal separation is the final annihilation of
all reasoning; for only by the union of conceptions with one another do we
attain to discourse of reason.
THEAETETUS: True.
STRANGER: And, observe that we were only just in time in making a
resistance to such separatists, and compelling them to admit that one thing
mingles with another.
THEAETETUS: Why so?
STRANGER: Why, that we might be able to assert discourse to be a kind of
being; for if we could not, the worst of all consequences would follow; we
should have no philosophy. Moreover, the necessity for determining the
nature of discourse presses upon us at this moment; if utterly deprived of
it, we could no more hold discourse; and deprived of it we should be if we
admitted that there was no admixture of natures at all.
THEAETETUS: Very true. But I do not understand why at this moment we must
determine the nature of discourse.
STRANGER: Perhaps you will see more clearly by the help of the following
explanation.
THEAETETUS: What explanation?
STRANGER: Not-being has been acknowledged by us to be one among many
classes diffused over all being.
THEAETETUS: True.
STRANGER: And thence arises the question, whether not-being mingles with
opinion and language.
THEAETETUS: How so?
STRANGER: If not-being has no part in the proposition, then all things
must be true; but if not-being has a part, then false opinion and false
speech are possible, for to think or to say what is not--is falsehood,
which thus arises in the region of thought and in speech.
THEAETETUS: That is quite true.
STRANGER: And where there is falsehood surely there must be deceit.
THEAETETUS: Yes.
STRANGER: And if there is deceit, then all things must be full of idols
and images and fancies.
THEAETETUS: To be sure.
STRANGER: Into that region the Sophist, as we said, made his escape, and,
when he had got there, denied the very possibility of falsehood; no one, he
argued, either conceived or uttered falsehood, inasmuch as not-being did
not in any way partake of being.
THEAETETUS: True.
STRANGER: And now, not-being has been shown to partake of being, and
therefore he will not continue fighting in this direction, but he will
probably say that some ideas partake of not-being, and some not, and that
language and opinion are of the non-partaking class; and he will still
fight to the death against the existence of the image-making and phantastic
art, in which we have placed him, because, as he will say, opinion and
language do not partake of not-being, and unless this participation exists,
there can be no such thing as falsehood. And, with the view of meeting
this evasion, we must begin by enquiring into the nature of language,
opinion, and imagination, in order that when we find them we may find also
that they have communion with not-being, and, having made out the connexion
of them, may thus prove that falsehood exists; and therein we will imprison
the Sophist, if he deserves it, or, if not, we will let him go again and
look for him in another class.
THEAETETUS: Certainly, Stranger, there appears to be truth in what was
said about the Sophist at first, that he was of a class not easily caught,
for he seems to have abundance of defences, which he throws up, and which
must every one of them be stormed before we can reach the man himself. And
even now, we have with difficulty got through his first defence, which is
the not-being of not-being, and lo! here is another; for we have still to
show that falsehood exists in the sphere of language and opinion, and there
will be another and another line of defence without end.
STRANGER: Any one, Theaetetus, who is able to advance even a little ought
to be of good cheer, for what would he who is dispirited at a little
progress do, if he were making none at all, or even undergoing a repulse?
Such a faint heart, as the proverb says, will never take a city: but now
that we have succeeded thus far, the citadel is ours, and what remains is
easier.
THEAETETUS: Very true.
STRANGER: Then, as I was saying, let us first of all obtain a conception
of language and opinion, in order that we may have clearer grounds for
determining, whether not-being has any concern with them, or whether they
are both always true, and neither of them ever false.
THEAETETUS: True.
STRANGER: Then, now, let us speak of names, as before we were speaking of
ideas and letters; for that is the direction in which the answer may be
expected.
THEAETETUS: And what is the question at issue about names?
STRANGER: The question at issue is whether all names may be connected with
one another, or none, or only some of them.
THEAETETUS: Clearly the last is true.
STRANGER: I understand you to say that words which have a meaning when in
sequence may be connected, but that words which have no meaning when in
sequence cannot be connected?
THEAETETUS: What are you saying?
STRANGER: What I thought that you intended when you gave your assent; for
there are two sorts of intimation of being which are given by the voice.
THEAETETUS: What are they?
STRANGER: One of them is called nouns, and the other verbs.
THEAETETUS: Describe them.
STRANGER: That which denotes action we call a verb.
THEAETETUS: True.
STRANGER: And the other, which is an articulate mark set on those who do
the actions, we call a noun.
THEAETETUS: Quite true.
STRANGER: A succession of nouns only is not a sentence, any more than of
verbs without nouns.
THEAETETUS: I do not understand you.
STRANGER: I see that when you gave your assent you had something else in
your mind. But what I intended to say was, that a mere succession of nouns
or of verbs is not discourse.
THEAETETUS: What do you mean?
STRANGER: I mean that words like 'walks,' 'runs,' 'sleeps,' or any other
words which denote action, however many of them you string together, do not
make discourse.
THEAETETUS: How can they?
STRANGER: Or, again, when you say 'lion,' 'stag,' 'horse,' or any other
words which denote agents--neither in this way of stringing words together
do you attain to discourse; for there is no expression of action or
inaction, or of the existence of existence or non-existence indicated by
the sounds, until verbs are mingled with nouns; then the words fit, and the
smallest combination of them forms language, and is the simplest and least
form of discourse.
THEAETETUS: Again I ask, What do you mean?
STRANGER: When any one says 'A man learns,' should you not call this the
simplest and least of sentences?
THEAETETUS: Yes.
STRANGER: Yes, for he now arrives at the point of giving an intimation
about something which is, or is becoming, or has become, or will be. And
he not only names, but he does something, by connecting verbs with nouns;
and therefore we say that he discourses, and to this connexion of words we
give the name of discourse.
THEAETETUS: True.
STRANGER: And as there are some things which fit one another, and other
things which do not fit, so there are some vocal signs which do, and others
which do not, combine and form discourse.
THEAETETUS: Quite true.
STRANGER: There is another small matter.
THEAETETUS: What is it?
STRANGER: A sentence must and cannot help having a subject.
THEAETETUS: True.
STRANGER: And must be of a certain quality.
THEAETETUS: Certainly.
STRANGER: And now let us mind what we are about.
THEAETETUS: We must do so.
STRANGER: I will repeat a sentence to you in which a thing and an action
are combined, by the help of a noun and a verb; and you shall tell me of
whom the sentence speaks.
THEAETETUS: I will, to the best of my power.
STRANGER: 'Theaetetus sits'--not a very long sentence.
THEAETETUS: Not very.
STRANGER: Of whom does the sentence speak, and who is the subject? that is
what you have to tell.
THEAETETUS: Of me; I am the subject.
STRANGER: Or this sentence, again--
THEAETETUS: What sentence?
STRANGER: 'Theaetetus, with whom I am now speaking, is flying.'
THEAETETUS: That also is a sentence which will be admitted by every one to
speak of me, and to apply to me.
STRANGER: We agreed that every sentence must necessarily have a certain
quality.
THEAETETUS: Yes.
STRANGER: And what is the quality of each of these two sentences?
THEAETETUS: The one, as I imagine, is false, and the other true.
STRANGER: The true says what is true about you?
THEAETETUS: Yes.
STRANGER: And the false says what is other than true?
THEAETETUS: Yes.
STRANGER: And therefore speaks of things which are not as if they were?
THEAETETUS: True.
STRANGER: And say that things are real of you which are not; for, as
we were saying, in regard to each thing or person, there is much that
is and much that is not.
THEAETETUS: Quite true.
STRANGER: The second of the two sentences which related to you was first
of all an example of the shortest form consistent with our definition.
THEAETETUS: Yes, this was implied in recent admission.
STRANGER: And, in the second place, it related to a subject?
THEAETETUS: Yes.
STRANGER: Who must be you, and can be nobody else?
THEAETETUS: Unquestionably.
STRANGER: And it would be no sentence at all if there were no subject,
for, as we proved, a sentence which has no subject is impossible.
THEAETETUS: Quite true.
STRANGER: When other, then, is asserted of you as the same, and not-being
as being, such a combination of nouns and verbs is really and truly false
discourse.
THEAETETUS: Most true.
STRANGER: And therefore thought, opinion, and imagination are now proved
to exist in our minds both as true and false.
THEAETETUS: How so?
STRANGER: You will know better if you first gain a knowledge of what they
are, and in what they severally differ from one another.
THEAETETUS: Give me the knowledge which you would wish me to gain.
STRANGER: Are not thought and speech the same, with this exception, that
what is called thought is the unuttered conversation of the soul with
herself?
THEAETETUS: Quite true.
STRANGER: But the stream of thought which flows through the lips and is
audible is called speech?
THEAETETUS: True.
STRANGER: And we know that there exists in speech...
THEAETETUS: What exists?
STRANGER: Affirmation.
THEAETETUS: Yes, we know it.
STRANGER: When the affirmation or denial takes Place in silence and in the
mind only, have you any other name by which to call it but opinion?
THEAETETUS: There can be no other name.
STRANGER: And when opinion is presented, not simply, but in some form of
sense, would you not call it imagination?
THEAETETUS: Certainly.
STRANGER: And seeing that language is true and false, and that thought is
the conversation of the soul with herself, and opinion is the end of
thinking, and imagination or phantasy is the union of sense and opinion,
the inference is that some of them, since they are akin to language, should
have an element of falsehood as well as of truth?
THEAETETUS: Certainly.
STRANGER: Do you perceive, then, that false opinion and speech have been
discovered sooner than we expected?--For just now we seemed to be
undertaking a task which would never be accomplished.
THEAETETUS: I perceive.
STRANGER: Then let us not be discouraged about the future; but now having
made this discovery, let us go back to our previous classification.
THEAETETUS: What classification?
STRANGER: We divided image-making into two sorts; the one likeness-making,
the other imaginative or phantastic.
THEAETETUS: True.
STRANGER: And we said that we were uncertain in which we should place the
Sophist.
THEAETETUS: We did say so.
STRANGER: And our heads began to go round more and more when it was
asserted that there is no such thing as an image or idol or appearance,
because in no manner or time or place can there ever be such a thing as
falsehood.
THEAETETUS: True.
STRANGER: And now, since there has been shown to be false speech and false
opinion, there may be imitations of real existences, and out of this
condition of the mind an art of deception may arise.
THEAETETUS: Quite possible.
STRANGER: And we have already admitted, in what preceded, that the Sophist
was lurking in one of the divisions of the likeness-making art?
THEAETETUS: Yes.
STRANGER: Let us, then, renew the attempt, and in dividing any class,
always take the part to the right, holding fast to that which holds the
Sophist, until we have stripped him of all his common properties, and
reached his difference or peculiar. Then we may exhibit him in his true
nature, first to ourselves and then to kindred dialectical spirits.
THEAETETUS: Very good.
STRANGER: You may remember that all art was originally divided by us into
creative and acquisitive.
THEAETETUS: Yes.
STRANGER: And the Sophist was flitting before us in the acquisitive class,
in the subdivisions of hunting, contests, merchandize, and the like.
THEAETETUS: Very true.
STRANGER: But now that the imitative art has enclosed him, it is clear
that we must begin by dividing the art of creation; for imitation is a kind
of creation--of images, however, as we affirm, and not of real things.
THEAETETUS: Quite true.
STRANGER: In the first place, there are two kinds of creation.
THEAETETUS: What are they?
STRANGER: One of them is human and the other divine.
THEAETETUS: I do not follow.
STRANGER: Every power, as you may remember our saying originally, which
causes things to exist, not previously existing, was defined by us as
creative.
THEAETETUS: I remember.
STRANGER: Looking, now, at the world and all the animals and plants, at
things which grow upon the earth from seeds and roots, as well as at
inanimate substances which are formed within the earth, fusile or non-
fusile, shall we say that they come into existence--not having existed
previously--by the creation of God, or shall we agree with vulgar opinion
about them?
THEAETETUS: What is it?
STRANGER: The opinion that nature brings them into being from some
spontaneous and unintelligent cause. Or shall we say that they are created
by a divine reason and a knowledge which comes from God?
THEAETETUS: I dare say that, owing to my youth, I may often waver in my
view, but now when I look at you and see that you incline to refer them to
God, I defer to your authority.
STRANGER: Nobly said, Theaetetus, and if I thought that you were one of
those who would hereafter change your mind, I would have gently argued with
you, and forced you to assent; but as I perceive that you will come of
yourself and without any argument of mine, to that belief which, as you
say, attracts you, I will not forestall the work of time. Let me suppose,
then, that things which are said to be made by nature are the work of
divine art, and that things which are made by man out of these are works of
human art. And so there are two kinds of making and production, the one
human and the other divine.
THEAETETUS: True.
STRANGER: Then, now, subdivide each of the two sections which we have
already.
THEAETETUS: How do you mean?
STRANGER: I mean to say that you should make a vertical division of
production or invention, as you have already made a lateral one.
THEAETETUS: I have done so.
STRANGER: Then, now, there are in all four parts or segments--two of them
have reference to us and are human, and two of them have reference to the
gods and are divine.
THEAETETUS: True.
STRANGER: And, again, in the division which was supposed to be made in the
other way, one part in each subdivision is the making of the things
themselves, but the two remaining parts may be called the making of
likenesses; and so the productive art is again divided into two parts.
THEAETETUS: Tell me the divisions once more.
STRANGER: I suppose that we, and the other animals, and the elements out
of which things are made--fire, water, and the like--are known by us to be
each and all the creation and work of God.
THEAETETUS: True.
STRANGER: And there are images of them, which are not them, but which
correspond to them; and these are also the creation of a wonderful skill.
THEAETETUS: What are they?
STRANGER: The appearances which spring up of themselves in sleep or by
day, such as a shadow when darkness arises in a fire, or the reflection
which is produced when the light in bright and smooth objects meets on
their surface with an external light, and creates a perception the opposite
of our ordinary sight.
THEAETETUS: Yes; and the images as well as the creation are equally the
work of a divine hand.
STRANGER: And what shall we say of human art? Do we not make one house by
the art of building, and another by the art of drawing, which is a sort of
dream created by man for those who are awake?
THEAETETUS: Quite true.
STRANGER: And other products of human creation are also twofold and go in
pairs; there is the thing, with which the art of making the thing is
concerned, and the image, with which imitation is concerned.
THEAETETUS: Now I begin to understand, and am ready to acknowledge that
there are two kinds of production, and each of them twofold; in the lateral
division there is both a divine and a human production; in the vertical
there are realities and a creation of a kind of similitudes.
STRANGER: And let us not forget that of the imitative class the one part
was to have been likeness-making, and the other phantastic, if it could be
shown that falsehood is a reality and belongs to the class of real being.
THEAETETUS: Yes.
STRANGER: And this appeared to be the case; and therefore now, without
hesitation, we shall number the different kinds as two.
THEAETETUS: True.
STRANGER: Then, now, let us again divide the phantastic art.
THEAETETUS: Where shall we make the division?
STRANGER: There is one kind which is produced by an instrument, and
another in which the creator of the appearance is himself the instrument.
THEAETETUS: What do you mean?
STRANGER: When any one makes himself appear like another in his figure or
his voice, imitation is the name for this part of the phantastic art.
THEAETETUS: Yes.
STRANGER: Let this, then, be named the art of mimicry, and this the
province assigned to it; as for the other division, we are weary and will
give that up, leaving to some one else the duty of making the class and
giving it a suitable name.
THEAETETUS: Let us do as you say--assign a sphere to the one and leave the
other.
STRANGER: There is a further distinction, Theaetetus, which is worthy of
our consideration, and for a reason which I will tell you.
THEAETETUS: Let me hear.
STRANGER: There are some who imitate, knowing what they imitate, and some
who do not know. And what line of distinction can there possibly be
greater than that which divides ignorance from knowledge?
THEAETETUS: There can be no greater.
STRANGER: Was not the sort of imitation of which we spoke just now the
imitation of those who know? For he who would imitate you would surely
know you and your figure?
THEAETETUS: Naturally.
STRANGER: And what would you say of the figure or form of justice or of
virtue in general? Are we not well aware that many, having no knowledge of
either, but only a sort of opinion, do their best to show that this opinion
is really entertained by them, by expressing it, as far as they can, in
word and deed?
THEAETETUS: Yes, that is very common.
STRANGER: And do they always fail in their attempt to be thought just,
when they are not? Or is not the very opposite true?
THEAETETUS: The very opposite.
STRANGER: Such a one, then, should be described as an imitator--to be
distinguished from the other, as he who is ignorant is distinguished from
him who knows?
THEAETETUS: True.
STRANGER: Can we find a suitable name for each of them? This is clearly
not an easy task; for among the ancients there was some confusion of ideas,
which prevented them from attempting to divide genera into species;
wherefore there is no great abundance of names. Yet, for the sake of
distinctness, I will make bold to call the imitation which coexists with
opinion, the imitation of appearance--that which coexists with science, a
scientific or learned imitation.
THEAETETUS: Granted.
STRANGER: The former is our present concern, for the Sophist was classed
with imitators indeed, but not among those who have knowledge.
THEAETETUS: Very true.
STRANGER: Let us, then, examine our imitator of appearance, and see
whether he is sound, like a piece of iron, or whether there is still some
crack in him.
THEAETETUS: Let us examine him.
STRANGER: Indeed there is a very considerable crack; for if you look, you
find that one of the two classes of imitators is a simple creature, who
thinks that he knows that which he only fancies; the other sort has knocked
about among arguments, until he suspects and fears that he is ignorant of
that which to the many he pretends to know.
THEAETETUS: There are certainly the two kinds which you describe.
STRANGER: Shall we regard one as the simple imitator--the other as the
dissembling or ironical imitator?
THEAETETUS: Very good.
STRANGER: And shall we further speak of this latter class as having one or
two divisions?
THEAETETUS: Answer yourself.
STRANGER: Upon consideration, then, there appear to me to be two; there is
the dissembler, who harangues a multitude in public in a long speech, and
the dissembler, who in private and in short speeches compels the person who
is conversing with him to contradict himself.
THEAETETUS: What you say is most true.
STRANGER: And who is the maker of the longer speeches? Is he the
statesman or the popular orator?
THEAETETUS: The latter.
STRANGER: And what shall we call the other? Is he the philosopher or the
Sophist?
THEAETETUS: The philosopher he cannot be, for upon our view he is
ignorant; but since he is an imitator of the wise he will have a name which
is formed by an adaptation of the word sophos. What shall we name him? I
am pretty sure that I cannot be mistaken in terming him the true and very
Sophist.
STRANGER: Shall we bind up his name as we did before, making a chain from
one end of his genealogy to the other?
THEAETETUS: By all means.
STRANGER: He, then, who traces the pedigree of his art as follows--who,
belonging to the conscious or dissembling section of the art of causing
self-contradiction, is an imitator of appearance, and is separated from the
class of phantastic which is a branch of image-making into that further
division of creation, the juggling of words, a creation human, and not
divine--any one who affirms the real Sophist to be of this blood and
lineage will say the very truth.
THEAETETUS: Undoubtedly.
End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of Sophist by Plato
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